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LATIN LITERATURE

Latin Literature

J? Wf M

By j: Wr MACKAIL

•OMBTOIB FBLLOW Ot BALUOL COLLBGB, OXFOl

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1908

PREFACE.

A History of Latin literature was to have been written
for this series of Manuals by the late Professor William
Sellar. After his death I was asked, as one of his old
pupils, to carry out the work which he had undertaken;
and this book is now offered as a last tribute to the
memory of my dear friend and master.

J. W. M.

^ 19603!^

■*-*^

CONTENTS.

L
THE REPUBLIC

PAGE

L Origins of Latin Literature: Early Enc and
Tragedy.

Andronictts and Naevius — Ennius — Pacuvius — Decay

of Tragedy 3

n. Comedy: Plautus and Terence.

Origins of Comedy — Plautus — Terence • • . 14

III. Early Prose: The **Satura," or Mixed Mode.

The Early Jurists — Cato — The Sdpionic Circle — Lu-
dlius — Pre-Qceronian Prose 27

IV. Lucretius 39

V. Lyric Poetry: Catullus.

Cinna and Calvus ••••••••52

VI. Cicero 62

VIL Prose of the Ciceronian Age: Caesar and Sallust.

Caesar — Caesar's Officers — Sallust — Nepos and Varro

— Publilius Syms 78

THE AUGUSTAN AGE.

I. ViRcaL • • 91

n. Horace 106

vii

viii Contents,

III. Profertius and the Elegists.

Augustan Tragedy — Gallus — Propertius — Tibullus . 120

IV. Ovm.
Julia and Sulpicia — Ovid 132

V. LiVY 145

VI. The Lesser Augustans.

Minor Augustan Poetry — Manilius — Phaedrus — Tro-
gus and Paterculus — Celsus — The Elder Seneca . 156

III.

THE EMPIRE.

" I. The Rome of Nero : Seneca, Lucan, Petronius.

Seneca — Lucan — Persius — Columella — Petronius . 171

n. The Silver Age: Statius, the Elder Pliny, Mar-
tial, QUINTILIAN.

Statins — Silius Italicus — Martial — The Elder Pliny

— Quintilian 186

m. Tacitus 205

IV. Juvenal, the Younger Pliny, Suetonius: Decay of
Classical Latin.

Juvenal — The Younger Pliny -^ Suetonius — Aulus
Gellius 221

V. The " Elocutio Novella."

Fronto — Apuleius — The Pervigilium Veneris . . 233

VI. Early Latin Christianity: Minucius Feux, Ter-

TULLIAN, LACTANTIUS.

Minucius Felix — TertuUian — Cyprian and Lactantius

— Commodianus — The Empire and the Church. • 247

Si-

VIL The Fourth Century: Ausonius and Claudian.

Papinian and Ulpian: Samonicus — Tibeiiknus: the
Augustan History — Ausonius — Gaudian — Pruden-
tius — Ammianus Marcellinus ..... 260

Contents. ix

rAGB

Vni. The Beginnings of the Middle Ages.

The End of the Ancient World — First Period — Sec-
ond and Third Periods — Fourth Period —The World
after Rome 275

Index of Authors 287

THE REPUBLIC

g^*,:

ORIGINS OF LATIN LITERATURE : EARLY EPIC AND

TRAGEDY.

To the Romans themselves, as they looked back two
hundred years later, the begmnmgs of a real literature
seemed definitely fixed in the generation which passed
between the first and second Punic wars. The peace of
B.C. 241 closed an epoch throughout which the Roman
Republic had been fighting for an assured place in the
group of powers which controlled the Mediterranean world.
This was now gained; and the pressure of Carthage thus '
removed, Rome was left free to follow the natural ex-
pansion of her colonies and her commerce. Wealth and
peace are comparative terms; it was in such wealth and
peace as the cessation of the long and exhausting war with
Carthage brought, that a leisured class began to form itself
at Rome, which not only could take a certain interest in
Greek literature, but felt in an indistinct way that it was
their duty, as representing one of the great civilised powers,
to have a substantial national culture of their own.

That this new Latin literature must be based on that
of Greece, went without saying; it was almost equally
inevitable that its earliest forms should be in the shape of
translations from that body of Greek poetry, epic and
dramatic, which had for long established itself through all
th'. Ore .k-apeaking world as a common basis of culture.

3 •

4 Latin Literature. [I.

Latin literature, though artificial in a fuller sense than that
of some other nations, did not escape the general law of
all literatures, that they must begin by verse before they
can go on to prose.

Up to this date, native Latin poetry had been confined,
so far as we can judge, to hymns and ballads, both of a
rude nature. Alongside of these were the popular festival-
performances, containing the germs of a drama. If the
words of these performances were ever written down (which
is rather more than doubtful), they would help to make
the notion of translating a regular Greek play come more
easily. But the first certain Latin translation was a piece
of work which showed a much greater audacity, and which
in fact, though this did not appear till long afterwards, was
much more far-reaching in its consequences. This was
a translation of the Odyssey into Satumian verse by one
Andronicus, a Greek prisoner of war from Tarentum, who
lived at Rome as a tutor to children of the governing class
during the first Punic War. At the capture of his city, he
had become the slave of one of the distinguished family
of the Livii, and after his manumission was known, accord-
ing to Roman custom, under the name of Lucius Livius
Andronicus.

The few fragments of his Odyssey which survive do not
show any high level of attainment ; and it is interesting to
note that this first attempt to create a mould for Latin
poetry went on wrong, or, perhaps it would be truer to say,
on premature lines. From this time henceforth the whole
serious production of Latin poetry for centuries was a
continuous effort to master and adapt Greek structure and
versification ; the Odyssey of Livius was the first and, with
one notable exception, almost the last sustained attempt
to use the native forms of Italian rhythm towards any
large achievement ; this current thereafter sets underground,
and only emerges again at the end of the classical period.
It is a curious and significant &ct that the attemot, such

I.] Andronicus atid Naevius, j

as it was, was made not by a native, but by a naturalised
foreigner.

The heroic hexameter was, of course, a metre much
harder to reproduce in Latin than the trochaic and iambic
metres of the Greek drama, the former of which especially
accommodated itself without difficulty to Italian speech.
In his dramatic pieces, which included both tragedies and
comedies, Andronicus seems to have kept to the Greek
measures, and in this he was foDowed by his successors.
Throughout the next two generations the production of
dramatic literature was steady and continuous. Gnaeus
Naevius, the first native Latin poet of consequence,
beginning to produce plays a few years later than Andro-
nicus, continued to write busily till after the end of the
second Punic War, and left the Latin drama thoroughly
established. Only inconsiderable fragments of his writings
survive ; but it is certain that he was a figure of really great
distinction. Though not a man of birth himself, he had
the skill and courage to match himself against the great
house of the Metelli. The Metelli, it is true, won the
battle ; Naevius was imprisoned,- and finally died in exile ;
but he had established literature as a real force in Rome.
Aiilus Gellius has preserved the splendid and haughty
verses which he wrote to be engraved on his own tomb —

Immortales mortaks si foret fas flere
Fkrent divae Camenae Naevium poetam ;
Itaque postquam est Orci tradiius ihesauro
Obliti sunt Romai loquier lingua Latina.

The Latin Muses were, ipdeed, then in the full pride and
hope of a vigorous and daring youth. The greater part of
Naevius' plays, both in tragedy and comedy, were, it is
trae, translated or adapted from Greek originals; but
alongside of these, — the Danae^ the Iphigenia, the Andro-
machef which even his masculine genius can hardly have
made more tSam pal9 reflexes of Euripides — were new

•• •

6 Latin Literature. [I.

creations, " plays of the purple stripe," as they came to be
called, where he wakened a tragic note from the legendary
or actual history of the Roman race. His Alimonium
Romuli et Remi, though it may have borrowed much from
the kindred Greek legends of Danae or Melanippe, was
one of the foundation-stones of a new national literature ;
in the tragedy of Clastidiuniy the scene was laid in his own
days, and the action turned on one of the great victories
won by those very Metelli whom, in a single stinging line,
he afterwards held up to the ridicule of the nation.

In his advanced years, Naevius took a step of even
greater consequence. Turning from tragedy to epic, he
did not now, like Andronicus, translate from the Greek,
but launched out on the new venture of a Roman epic
The Latin language was not yet ductile enough to catch
the cadences of the noble Greek hexameter ; and the native
Latin Satumian was the only possible alternative. How
far he was successful in giving modulation or harmony to
this rather cumbrous and monotonous verse, the few extant
fragments of the Bellum Punicum hardly enable us to
determine; it is certain that it met with a great and
continued success, and that, even in Horace's time, it was
universally read. The subject was not unhappily chosen :
the long struggle between Rome and Carthage had, in the
great issues involved, as well as in its aboimding dramatic
incidents and thrilling fluctuations of fortune, many elements
of the heroic, and almost of the superhuman; and in his
interweaving of this great pageant of history with the
ancient legends of both cities, and his connecting it, through
the story of Aeneas, with the war of Troy itself, Naevius
showed a constructive power of a very high order. It is,
doubtless, possible to make too much of the sweeping
statements made in the comments of Macrobius and Servius
on the earlier parts of the ^4?»^/^^ '' this passage is all
taken from Naevius ; " " all this passage is simply conveyed
from Naevius* Punic IVarJ* Yet there is no doubt that

I.] Ennius, 7

Virgil owed him immense obligations ; though in the details
of the war itself we can recognise little in the fragments
beyond the dry and disconnected narrative of the rhyming
chronicler. Naevius laid the foundation of the Roman
epifij, he left it at his death — in spite of the despondent
and perhaps jealous criticism which he left as his epitaph —
in the hands qf an abler and more illustrious successor.
^ Qiuintus Ennius, the first of the great Roman poets, and
a figure of prodigious literary fecundity and versatility, was
bom at a small town of Calabria about thirty years later
than Naevius, and, though he served as a young man in the
Roman army, did not obtain the full citizenship till fifteen
years after Naevius* death. For some years previously he
had lived at Rome, under the patronage of the great Scipio
Africanus, busily occupied in keeping up a supply of
translations from the Greek for use on the Roman stage.
The easier circumstances of his later life do not seem to
have in any way diminished his fertility or the care which
he lavished on the practice of his art. He was the first
instance irf the Western world of the pure man of letters.
Alongside of his strictly literary production, he occupied
himself, diligently with the technique of composition —
grammar, spelling, pronunciation, metre, even an elementary
system of shorthand. Four books of miscellaneous transla-
tions from popular Greek authors familiarised the reading
public at Rome with several branches of general literature
hitherto only known to scholars. Following the demand
of the market, he translated comedies, seemingly with
indifferent success. But his permanent fame rested on two
great bodies of work, tragic and epic, in both of which he
far eclipsed his predecessors.

We possess the names, and a considerable body of frag-
ments, of upwards of twenty of his tragedies ; the greater
number of the fragments being preserved in the works of
Cicero, who was never tired of reading and quoting him.
As is usual with such quotations, they throw light more on

8 Latin Literature. ' [I.

his mastery of phrase and power of presenting detached
thoughts, than on his more strictly dramatic quahties.
That masteiy-jQf .phrase is astonishing. From the silver
beauty of the moonUt line from his Melanippe —

Lumine sic tremulo terra et cava caerula candent,

to the thimderous oath of Achilles —

Per ego deum sublitnas subices
UmidaSy unde oritur imber sonitu saevo et spiritu

they give examples of almost the whole range of beauty
of which the Latin language is capable. Two quotations
may show his manner as a translator. The first is a frag-
ment of question and reply from the splendid prologue
to the Iphigenia at Aulis^ one of the most thrilling and
romantic passages in Attic poetry —

Agam. Quid noetic videtur in altisono

Caeli clupeo?
Senex. Temo superat

Cogens sublime etiam atque etiam

Noctis iter.

What is singular here is not that the mere words are
wholly different from those of the original, but that in the
apparently random variation Ennius produces exactly the
same strange and solemn effi^ct. This is no accident: it
is genius. Again, as a specimen of his manner in more
ordinary narrative speeches, we may take the prologue to
his Medeay where the well-known Greek is pretty closely
followed —

Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus
Caesa cecidisset abiegna ad terram trcUfes^
Neve inde navis inchoandae exordium
Coepisset, quae nunc nominatur nomine
ArgOf quia Argivi in ea dilecti viri

I.] Ennius, 9

VecH petehant pellem inauratam arietis

Colchis y imperio regis Peliae^ per dolum :

Nam nunquatn era errans tnea domo ecferret pedem

Medea, animo aegra, amore saevo saucia.

At first reading these lines may seem rather stiff and
ungraceful to ears familiar with the liquid lapse of the
Euripidean iambics; but it is not till after the second or
even the third reading that one becomes aware in them of
a strange and austere beauty of rhythm which is distinctively
Italian. Specially curious and admirable is the use of
elision, in the eighth, for instance, and even more so in the
fifth line, so characteristic alike of ancient and modem
Italy. In Latin poetry Virgil was its last and greatest
master ; its gradual disuse in post-Virgilian poetry, like its
absence in the earlier hexameters of Cicero, was fatal to the
music of the verse, and with its reappearance in the early
Italian poetry of the Middle Ages that music once more
returns.

It was in hh later years, and after long practice in many
literary forms, that Ennius wrote his great historical epic,
th^ eighteen books of AnnaleSy in which he recorded the
legendary and actual history of the Roman State from the
arrival of Aeneas in Italy down to the events of his own day.
The way here had been shown him by Naevius ; but in the
interval, chiefly owing to Ennius' own genius and industry,
the literary capabilities of the language had made a very
great advance. It is uncertain whether Ennius made
any attempt to develop the native metres, which in his pre-
decessor's work were still rude and harsh ; if he did, he must
soon have abandoned it. Instead, he threw himself on the
task of moulding the Latifi language to the movement of
the-splendid Greek hexameter ; his success in the enterprise
was so conclusive that the question between the two forms
was never again raised. The Annales at once became a
classic j until dislodged by the Aeneidy they remained th^

lo Latin Literature, [L

foremost and representative Roman poem, and even in the
centuries which followed, they continued to be read and
admired, and their claim to the first eminence was still
supported by many partisans. The sane and lucid judgment
of Quintilian recalls them to their true place ; in a felicitous
simile he compares them to some sacred grove of aged oaks,
which strikes the senses with a solemn awe rather than with
the charm of beauty. Cicero, who again and again speaks
of Ennius in terms of the highest praise, admits that defect
of finish on which the Augustan poets lay strong but not
unjustified stress. The noble tribute of Lucretius, " as our
Ennius sang in immortal verse, he who first brought ddwn *
from lovely Helicon a garland of evergreen leaf to sound
and shine throughout the nations of Italy," was no less than
due firom a poet who owed so much to Ennius in manner
and versification.

It is not known when the Annates were lost ; there are
doubtful indications of their existence in the earlier Middle
Ages. The extant fragments, though they amount only to
a few hundrec^ lines, are sufficient to give a clear idea of the
poet's style and versification, and of the remarkable breadth
and sagacity which made the poem a storehouse of civil
wisdom for the more cultured members of the ruling classes
at Rome, no less than a treasury of rhythm and phrase for
the poets. In the famous single lines like —

Non cauponantes beUum sed belligerantes^
Quern nemo ferro potuit superare nee auroy

Itle vir hand magna cum re sed ptenu^ fidei,
or the great — ^

Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque

Ennius expressed, with even greater point and weight
than Virgil himself, the haughty virtue, the keen and

I.] Pacuvius,- II

narrow political instinct, by which the small and struggling
mid-Italian town grew to be arbitress of the world ; _n ot
Lucretius wjth his vast and melancholy outlook over a
world where patriotism did not exist for the philosopher,
not Virgil with his deep and charmed broodings over the
mystery and beauty of life and death, struck the Roman
note so exclusively and so certainly.

The success of the Latin epic in Ennius' hands was
indeed for the period so complete that it left no room for
further development ; for the next hundred years t*he Annales
remained not only the unique, but the satisfying achievement
in this kind of poetry, and it was only when a new wave of
Greek influence had brought with it a higher and more
refined standard of literary culture, that fresh progress could
be attained or desired. It was not so with tragedy. So
long as the stage demanded fresh material, it continued to
be supplied, and the supply only ceased when, as had
happened even in Greece, the acted drama dwindled away
before the gaudier methods of the music-hall. Marcus
Pacuvius, the nephew of Ennius, wrote plays for the thirty
years after his uncle's death, which had an even greater
vogue; he is placed by Cicero at the head^pfJRoman
tragedians. The plays have all perished, and even the
fragments are lamentably few ; we can still trace in them,
however, the copiousness of fancy and richness of phrase
which was marked as his distinctive quality by the great
critic Varro. Only one Roman play (on Lucius Aemilius
Paulus, the conqueror of Pydna *) is mentioned among his
pieces; and this, though perh^ accidental, may indicate
that tragedy had not really pushed its roots deep enough
at Rome, and was destined to an early decay. Inexhaustible
as is the life and beauty of the old Greek mythology, it was

* One of the great speeches in this play was probably made use of
by Livy in his account of the address of Paulus to the people after his
triumph in 167 B.C., which has. again been turned into noble tragic
verse by Fita^gerald, Literary Remains ^ vol. ii. p. 483.

12 Latin Literature, [l.

impossible that a Roman audience should be content to
listen for age after age to the stories of Atalanta and
Antiope, Pentheus and Orestes, while they had a new
national life and overwhelming native interests of their
own. The Greek tragedy tended more and more to
become the merely literary survival that it was in France
under Louis Quatorze, that it has been in our own day ,
in the hands of Mr. Arnold or Mr. Swinburne. But one
more poet of remarkable genius carries on its history into
the next age.

Lucius Accius of Pisaurum produced one of his early
pla)rs in the year 140 B.C., on the same occasion when one
of his latest was produced by Pacuvius, then an old man of
eighty. Accius reached a like age himself; Cicero as a
young man knew him well, and used to relate incidents of
the aged poet's earlier Ufe which he had heard from his own
lips. For the greater part of the fifty years which include
Sulla and the Gracchi, Accius was the recognised literary-
master at Rome, president of the college of poets which
held its meetings in the temple of Minerva on the Aventine,
and associating on terms of full equality with the most
distinguished statesman. A doubtful tradition mentions
him as having also written an epic, or at least a narrative
poem, caUed AnnaleSy like that of Ennius ; but this in all
likelihood is a distorted reflection of the fact that he
handed down and developed the great literary tradition left
by his predecessor. The volume of his dramatic work was
very great ; the titles are preserved of no less than foity-five
tragedies. In general estimation he brought Roman tragedy
to its highest point The fragments show a grace and
fancy which we can hardly trace in the earlier tragedians.

Accius was the last, as he seems to have been tl^e
greatest, of his race. Tragedy indeed continued, as we
shall see, to be written and even to be acted. The literary
men of the Ciceronian and Augustan age published their
plays as a matter of course; Varius was coupled by his

I.] Decay of Tragedy. 13

contemporaries with Virgil and Horace ; and the lost Medea
of Ovid, like the never-finished Ajc^ of Augustus, would be
at tEe least a highly interesting literary document. But the
new age found fresh poetical forms into which it could put
its best thought and art ; while a blow was struck directly
at the roots of tragedy by the new invention, in the hands
of Cicero and his contemporaries, of a grave, impassioned,
and stately prose.

gomedy: plautus and terence.

Great as was the place occupied in the culture of the
Greek world by Homer and the Attic tragedians, the
Middle and New Comedy, as they culminated in Menander,
exercised an even wider and more pervasive influence.
A vast gap lay between the third and fifth centuries before
Christ. Aeschylus, and even Sophocles, had become ancient
literature in the age immediately following their own.
Euripides, indeed, continued for centuries after his death
to be a vital force of immense moment ; but this force he
owed to the qualities in him that make his tragedy transgress
the formal limits of the art, to pass into the wider sphere of
the human comedy, with its tears and laughter, its sentiment
and passions. From him to Menander is in truth but a
step ; but this step was of such importance that it was the
comedian who became the Shakespeare of Greece. Omnem
vUae imaginem expressit are the words deliberately used of
him by the greatest of Roman critics.

When, therefore, the impulse towards a national literature
began to be felt at Rome, comedy took its place side by
side with tragedy and epic as part of the Greek secret that
had to be studied and mastered ; and this came the more
naturally that a sort of comedy in rude but definite forms
was already native and familiar. Dramatic improvisations
were^ from an immemorial antiquity, a regular feature of

n.] "^ Origins of Comedy. 1 5

Italian festivals. They were classed under different heads,
which cannot be sharply distinguished. The Satura seems
to have been peculiarly Latin; probably it did not differ
deeply or essentially from the two other leading types that
arose north and south of Latium, and were named from the
little country towns of Fescennium in Etruria, and Atella
in Campania. But these rude performances hardly rose
to the rank of literature ; and here, as elsewhere, the first
literary standard was set by laborious translations from the
Greek.

We find, accordingly, that the earlier masters — Andronicus,
Naevius, Ennius — all wrote comedies as well as tragedies,
of the type known as pal liata^ ox " dressed in the Greek
mantle," that is to say, freely translated or adapted from
Greek originals. After Ennius, this still continued to be the
more usual type; but the development of technical skill
now results in two important changes. The writers of
comedy become, on the whole and broadly speaking,
distinct from the writers of tragedy ; and alongside of the
paUiata springs up the togata^ or comedy of Italian dress,
persons, and manners.

As this latter form of Latin comedy has perished, with
the exception of trifling fragments, it may be dismissed here
in few words. Its life was comprised in less than a century,
i/l'i^iius, the first of the writers of th&fabula togata of whom
we have any certain information, was a contemporary
of Terence and the younger Scipio ; a string of names,
which are names and nothing more, carries us down to
the latest and most celebrated of the list, Lucius Afranius.^
His middle-class comedies achieved a large and a long-
continued popularity; we hear of performances of them
being given even a hundred years after his death, and
Horace speaks with gentle sarcasm of the enthusiasts who
put him on a level with Menander. With his contemporary
Qoinctius Atta (who died b.c. 77, in the year of the abortive
revolution after the death of Sulla), he owed much of his

l6 Latin Literature. [L

success to the admirable acting of Rosd as, who created a
stage tradition that lasted long after his own time. To
the mass of the people^ comedy (though it did not err in
the direction of over-refinement) seemed tame by com-
parison with the shows and pageants showered on them
by the ruling class as the price of their suffrages. As in
other ages and countries, ^hionable society followed the
mob. The young man about town, so familiar to us from
the brilliant sketches of Ovid, accompanies his mistress, not
to comedies of manners, but to the more exciting spectacles
of flesh and blood offered by the ballet-dancers and the
gladiators. Thus the small class who occupied themselves
with literature had little counteracting influence pressed on
them to keep them from the fatal habit of perpetually
copying from the Greek; and adaptations from the Attic
New Comedy, which had been inevitable and proper enough
as the earlier essays of a tentative dramatic art, remained
the staple of an art which thus cut itself definitely away
from nature.

That we possess, in a fairly complete form, the works of
two of the most celebrated of these playwrights, and of their
many cpnteihporaries and successors nothing but trifling
fragments, is due to a chance or a series of chances which
we cannot follow, and from which we must not draw too
precise conclusions. Flautus was the earliest, and apparently
the most voluminous, of the writers who devoted themselves
wholly to comedy. Between him and Terence a generation
intervenes, filled by another comedian, Caeciliug, whose
works were said to unite much of the special excellences
of both ; while after the death of Terence his work was
continued on the same lines by Turpilius and others, and
dwindled away little by little into the~arly Empire. But
there can be no doubt that Pjautus-jand^JTerence fully
represent the strength and weakness^of the Latin paUiata.
Together with the eleven plays 0f.Ari9t0pha1v.es, they $iave
been in fact, since -the beginning of the Middle Ages^ the

)

II.] Plautus. 17

sole representatives of ancient, and the sole ' models of
modem comedy.

TituS-.Macdtts Plautus was bom of poor parents, in the
little Umbrian town of Sarsiy a^ in the yea r^254 b .c, thus
falling midway in* age between Naevius and Ennius. Some-
how or other he drifted to the capital, to find employment
as a stage-carpenter. He altem ated his playwriting with
the hardest manual drudgery ; and though the inexhaustible
animal spirits which show themselves in his writing explain
how he was able to combine extraordinary literary fertility
with a life of difficulty and poverty, it must remain a mystery
how and when he picked up his education, and his surprising
Tnagtcfy Qf tl^^ JaHt^ lanprna pe both in metre and dicti on.
Of the one hundred and thirty comedies attributed to him,
two-thirds were rejected as spurious by Varro, and only
twenty-one ranked as certainly genuine. These last are
extant, with the exception of one, called The Carpet-Bag^
which was lost in the Middle Ages ; some of them, however,
exist, and probably existed in Varro's time, only in abridged
or mutilated stage copies.

The constructive power shown in these pieces is, of course,
less that of Plautus himself than of his Greek originals,
PhHeinra, Diphilus, and Menander. But we do not want
modem instances to assureHs that, in adapting a play from
one language to another, merely to keep the plot unimpaired
implies more than ordinary qualities of skill or conscientious-
ness. When Plautus is at his best — in the Aulularia,
Bacchides, or Rudens, and most notably in the Caj^^n —
he has seldom been improved upon either in the interest
of his action or in the copiousness and vivacity of his
dialogue.

Over and above his easy mastery of language, Plautus
has a further claim to distinction in the wide range of his
manner. Whether he ever went beyond Tlie New Comedy
of Athens for his ori^nals, is uncertain ; but within it he
rangeslreely over the whole ^Id^ and" the twenty extant

l8 Latin Literature, [I.

plays include specimens of almost every kind of play to
which the name of comedy can be extended. The first
on the list, the famous AmphitruOy irThe only surviving
specimen of the^burlesque. The^reeks called this kind of

'^^^^^ *^ vpiece IXoporpa^wSta — a term for which tragedie-bojdfe would
be the nearest modem equivalent; tragico-comoedia is the
name by which Plautus himself describes it in the prologue.
The Amphitruo remains, even now, one of the most masterly
specimens of this kind. The version of Moli^re, in which
he did little by way of improvement on his original, has
given it fresh currency as a classic; but the French play
gives but an imperfect idea of the spirit and flexibility of
the dialogue in Plautus' hands. ^

Of a very different type is the piece which comes neit*Tflle
Atnphrituo in acknowledged excellence, the Captivi. It is
a comedy of sentiment, without female characters, and
therefore" without the coarseness which (as one is forced to

'^' ^^ say with regret) disfigures some of the other plays. The
development of the plot has won high praise from all critics,
and justifies the boast of the epilogue, Huiusmodi paucas
poetae reperiunt comoedias. But the praise which the author
gives to his own piece —

Non pertractate facta est neque item ut ceterae,
Neque spurcidici insunt versus immemorabiles^
Hie neque periurus leno est nee tneretrix mala
Neque miles gloriosus —

is really a severe condemnation of two other groups of
Plautine plays. The Casina and the Truculentus (the
latter, as we know from Cicero, a special favourite with its
author) are studies in pornography which only the unflagging
animal spirits of the poet can redeem from being disgust-
ing ; and the Asinaria, Curculio, and Miles Gloriosus are
broad farces with .the thinnest thread of plot. The last
depends wholly on the somewhat forced and exaggerated
character of the title-role ; as the Fseudolus, a piece with

II.] Plautus, 19

lather more substance, does mainly on its perturus lenoy
Ballio, a character who reminds one of Falstaff in his entire
shamelessness and inexhaustible vocabulary.

A diflferent vein, the domestic comedy of middle-class
life, is opened in one of the most quietly successful of
his pieces, the TrinummuSy or Threepenny-bit In spite of
all the characters being rather fatiguingly virtuous in their
sentiments, it is full of liveliness, and not without graceful-
ness and charm. After the riotous scenes of the lighter
plays, it is something of a comfort to return to the good
sense and good feeling of respectable people. It forms an
interesting contrast to the Bacchides, a play which returns
to the world of the bawd and harlot, but with a brilliance
of intrigue and execution that makes it rank high among
comedies.

Two other plays are remarkable from the fact that,
though neither in construction nor in workmanship do they
rise beyond mediocrity, the leading motive of the plot in
one case and the principal character in the other are in-
ventions of unusual felicity. The Greek original of both
is unknown; but to it, no doubt, rather than to Plautus
himself, we are bound to ascribe the credit of the Aulularia
and Menaechmi. The Aulularia, or Pot^ Gold, a common-
place story of middle-class life, is a mere framework for the
portrait of the old miser, Euclio — in itself a sketch full of
life and brilliance, and still more famous as the original
of Moli^re*s Harpagon, which is closely studied from it.
The Menaechmi, or Comedy of Errors, without any great
ingenuity of plot or distinction of character, rests securely
on the inexhaustible opportunities of humour opened up
by the happy invention of the twin-brothers who had lost
sight of one another from early childhood, and the con-
fusions that arise when they both find themselves in the
same town.

There is yet one more of the Plautine comedies which
deserves special notice, as conceived in a different vein

TO Latin Literature, [L

and worked oat in a difierent tone from all diose ahcadj
mentioned — the channing romantic comedj cs^tARudtns^
or The Cable ^ thoag|i a more fitting name for it woaM be
The Tempest, Though not pitched in the sentimental key
of the Captivif it has a higher, and, in Latin fiteiatnrey
a rarer, note. Bjr a happj chance, perhaps, rather than
fiom any omronted effort of skiD, this translation of the
play of Diphilus has brought with it something of the miiqae
and nnmistakeable Greek atmosphere — the atmosphere dL
the Odyssey^ of the fisher-idyl of Theocritos, of the hundreds
of Httle poems in the Greek Anthology that bear clinging
abont their verses the fiunt mmmtir and odour of the sea.
The scene is laid near Gyrene, on the strange rich African
coast; the prologue is spoken, not by a character in the
piece, nor by a decently clothed abstraction like the figures
of Luxury and Poverty which speak the prologue of the
TrinummuSj but by the star Aijpturus, watcher and tempest-
bearer.

Qui gentes omnes, mariaque et terras nufvet,
Eius SUM civis cwitate caeUtum;
Ita sum ut videtis, splendens stella Candida^
Signum quod semper tempore exoritur sua
Hie atque in caelo ; nomen Arcturo est mihi,
Noctu sum in caelo clarus atque inter decs ;
Inter mortales ambulo interdius.

The romantic note struck in these opening lines is con-
tinued throughout the comedy, in which, by little touches
here and there, the scene is kept constantly before us of
the rocky shore in the strong brilliant sun after the storm
of the night, the temple with its kindly priestess, and the
red-tiled country-house by the reeds of the lagoon, with the
solitary pastures behind it dotted over with fennel. Now
and again one is reminded of the Winter^ s Tale, with fisher-
men instead of shepherds for the subordinate characters ;

IL] Plautus. 21

more frequently of a play which, indeed, has borrowed a
good deal from this, Pericks Prince of Tyre.

The remainder of the Plautine plays may be dismissed
with scant notice. They comprise three variations on the
theme which, to modem taste, has become so excessively
tedious, of the Fourberies de Scapin — the Epidicus, Mostel-
laria, and Persa; the Poenulus, a dull play, which owes its
only interest to the passages in it written in the Carthaginian
language, which ofifer a tempting field for the conjectures
of the philologist ; two more, the Mercator and Stichus, of
confused plot and insipid dialogue ; and a mutilated frag-
ment of the Cisteliaria, or Travelling- Trunk, which would
not have been missed had it shared the fate of the Carpet-
Bag.

The humour of one age is often mere weariness to the
next ; and farcical comedy is, of all the forms of literature,
perhaps the least adapted for permanence. It would be
affectation to claim that Plautus is nowadays widely read
outside o f the inner cir ct ^ of schola rs : and there he is read
almost wholly on account of his unusual fertility and interest
as a field of l inguistic study . Yet he must always remain
one of the great outstanding influences jn_ literary history .
The strange fate which has left nothing but inconsiderable
fragments out of the immense volume of the later Athenian
Comedy, raised Plautus to a position co-ordinate witlT that
of Aristophanes as a model for the reviving literature of
modem Europe ; for such part of that literature (by much
the more important) as did not go b eyond Latin for its
inspiration, Plautus was a source of unig ug, and capital
vahie, in his own branch of literature equivalent to Cicero
or Virgil in theirs.

Plautus oiittived the seco nd Punic Wa r, during which,
as we gather fi-om prefaces and allusions, a number of the
extant plays wer e produc ed. Soon after the final collapse
of the Carthaginian po wer at Zama ^ a chil3" was bom
at •Carthage^ >?rbo^ a few years later, in the course of

X'.Vj-

22 Latin Literature, [L

oneiplained vicissitudes, reached Rome as a boy-sLave, and
passed there into the possession of a rich and educated
senator, Terentius Lucanus. The boy showed some un-
usual turn for books; he was educated and manumitted
by his master, and took from him the name of Publius
Terentius the African. A small literary circle of the Roman
aristocracy — men too high in rank to need to be carefld
what company they kept — admitted young Terence to their
intimate companionship ; and soon he was widely known as
making a third in the friendship of Gaius ^LaeUi is with the
first citizen of the Republic, the younger Scipio African us.
This society, an informal academy of letters, devoted all its
energies to the purification and improvement of _^ Latin
language. The rough drafts of the Terentian c619Bl!dies were
read out to them, and the language and style criticised in
minute detail ; gossip even said that they were largely written
by Scipio's own hand, and Terence himself, as is not siu:-
prising, never took pains to deny the rumour. Six plajrs
had been subjected to this elaborate coriection and pro-
duced on the Roman stage, when Terence undertook a
prolonged visit to Greece for the purpose of frirther study.
He died of fever the next year — by one account, at a village
in Arcadia; by another, when on his voyage home. The
six comedies had already taken the place which they have
ever since retained as Latin classics.

The Terentian comedy is in a way the tiuning-point of
Roman literature. Plautus and Ennius, however largely
they drew from Greek originals, threw into all thei^;j5[ork
a manner and a spirit which were essenti^^ tho se of__ a
new literature in the full tide of growth. The imitation of
Greek models was a means, not an end ; in both pogte the
Greek manner is continually abandoned for essays into a
new manner of their own, and they relapse upon it when
their imperfectly mastered powers of invention or expres-
sion give way under them. In the circle of Terence^the.
fatal doctrine was originated that the Greek manner was

11.] Terence, 2$

an end in itself, and that the road to perfection lay, not in
developing any original qualities, but in reproducing with
laborious fidelity the accents of another language and
civilisation. Nature took a swift and certain revenge.
Correctness of sentiment and smooth elegance of diction
became the standards of excellence ; and Latin literature,
still mainly confined to the governing class and their
dependents, was struck at the root (the word is used of
Terence himself by Varro) with the fatal disease of
mediocrity.

But in Terence himself (as in Addison among English
writers) this mediocrity is, indeed, golden — a mediocrity
fifil of grace and charm. The unruffled smoothness of
diction, the exquisite purity of language, are qualities
admirable in themselves, and are accompanied by~^other
striking merits ; not, indeed, by dramatic forc& OLconstruc-
tive power, but by careful and delicate portraiture of
character, and by an urbanity (to use a Latin word which
expresses a peculiarly Latin qual ity) to which the world
owes a deep debt for having set a fashion. In some curious
lines preserved by Suetonius, Julius Caesar expresses a
criticism, which we shairimd it hard to improve, on the
"halved Menander," to whom his own fastidious purity
in the use of language, no less than his tact and courtesy
as a man of the world, attracted him strongly,* while not
blinding him to the weakness and flaccidity of the Terentian
drama. Its effect on contemporary men of letters was
immediate and irresistible. A story is told, bearing all
the marks of truth, oTthe young poet when he submitted
his first play, The Maid of Andros, for the approval of^he
Commissioners_of Public Works, who were responsible for
the production of plays at the civic festivals. He was
ordered to read it aloud to Caecilius, who, since the death
of Flautus, had been supreme without a rival on the comic
stage. Terence presented himself modestly while 'Caecilius
was at supper, and was carelessly told to sit down on a stool

24 Latin LiUrature, [1.

Id the dhung-rooniy and begin. He had not read bejond
a feir Terses when CaecOias stopped hhn, and made him
take a seat at table. After sapper was cnrer, he heard
Ins guest's play oat with onboonded and nnqnaHfied
admiration.

Bat this admiration of the literary class did not make tl^
refoed conventional art of Terence sacces5M~for its im-
mediate purposes on the stage: he was caviare to the
general. Five of the six plays were produced at tke
spring festival of the Mother of the Gods — an occasion
when the theatre had not to face the competition of the
circas; yet even then it was only by immense efforts on
the part of the management that they succeeded in attract-
ing an audience. The M0ther:jnjMw{m>Xy it is true, a play
which shows the author at his best) was twice produced as
a dead failure. The third'time it was pulled through by
extraordinary effortson the part of the acting-manager,
Ambivius-.'Jurpio. The^rologue written by Terence fori
this third perfohnance is one of the most curious literary
documents of the time. He is too angry to extenuate the
repeated failure of |iis play. If we believe him, it fell dead
the first time because ^^ tha t foo l, the public," were all
excitement over an exhibition on the tigEt-rope which was
to follow the ^ay ; at the second representation only one
act had been gone through, when a rumour spread that
"there were going to be gladiators^ elsewhere, and in five
minutes the theatre was empty.

The Terentian prologues (Ihey are attached to all his

pla3r8) are indeed all very interesting from the light they
throw on the character of the author, as well as on the ideas
and fashions of his age. In all of liiem there is a certain
hard and acrid purism that cloaks in modest phrases an
immense contempt for all that lies beyond the'writerjs^own
canqps of taste. In hac est pura oratiOy a phrase of the
prologue to The Self -Tormentor /\% the implied burden of
them all. He is a sort of literary Robespierre ; one seems

II.] Terence, 25

to catch the premonitory echo of well-known phrases,
"degenerate condition of literary spirit, backsliding on
this hand and on that, I, Terence, alone l eft incor ruptible/'
Three times there is a reference to Plautus, and always
with a tone of chilly superiority which is too proud to
break into an open sneer. Yet among ihese haughty and
frigid manifestoes some felicity of phrase or of sentiment
will suddenly remind us that here, after all, we are dealing
with one of the great formative intelligences of literature ;
where, for instanceTuT the prologue to the lively and witty
comedy of The Eu nuch, the famous line —

NuUutnst jam dictum quod noffi'dlil^um sit prius —

drops with the same easy negligence as in the opening
dialogue of The Self-Tormentor, the immortal —

Homo sum : humani nihil a me alienum puto —^

falls from the hps of the old farmer. Congreve alone of
English playwrights has this glittering" smoothness, this
inimitable ease ; if we remember what Dryden, in language
too splendid to be insincere, wrote of his young friend, we
may imagine, perhaps, how CaeciHus and his circle regarded
Terence. Nor is it hard to believe that, had Terence, like
Congreve, lived into an easy and honoured old age, he
would still have rested his reputation on these productions
of nis early youth. Both dramatists had from the first
seen clearly and precisely what they had in view, and had
almost at the first stroke attained it : the very completeness
of the success must in both cases have precluded the dis-
satisfaction through which fresh advances could alone be
possible.

This, too, is one reason, thcftigh certainly not the only
one, why, with the death of Terence, the development of
Latin comedy at once ceased. His successors are mere
shadowy names. Any life that remained in the art took

26 Latin Literature. [I.

the channel of the fiarces which, for a hnndied 3^eais more,
retained a genuine popularity, but which never took rank
as literature of serious value. Even this, ihcfabula taber-
naria, or comedy of low life, gradually melted away before
the continuous competition of the shows which so moved
the spleen of Terence — the pantomimists, the jugglers, the
gladiators. By this time, too, the literary instinct was
beginning to explore fresh channels. Not only was prose
hecp minp ^ year bv yf ar mr^r e copious and flexible, but the
mixed mode, fluctuating between prosT'aud vcise, to which
the Romans gave the name of satire, was in process of
invention. Like the novel as compared with the play at
the present time, it offered great and obvious advantages
in ease and variety of manipulation, and in the simplicity
and inexpensiveness with which, not depending on the
stated performances of a public theatre, it could be pro-
duced and circulated. But before proceeding to consider
this new literary invention more fully, it wiU be well to
pause in order to gather up, as its necessary complement,
the general lines on which Latin prose was now developing,
whether in response to the influence of Greek models, or
in the course of a more native and independent growth.

IIL

EARLY prose: THE SATURA, OR MIXED MODE.

Law and government were the two great achievement s of
the La firfface ; and the two fountain-heads of Latin prose
are, on the one hand, the texts of codes and_the comixien-
taries,^>fjunsts : on the other, the _ann als of the inner con-
stitution and the external conquests and^ diplomacy of
Rome. The beginnings of both went further back than
Latin antiquaries could trace them. Out of the mists of
a legendary antiquity two fixed ""points rise, behind which
it is needless or impossiBle to goT"* The code known as
that of the Twelve Tables, of which large fragments survive
in later law-books, was^rawn up, according to the accepted
chronology, in the year 450 b.c. Sixty years later the sack jdjQ
of Rome by the Gauls led to the destruction of nearly all
public and private records, and it was only from this date
onwards that such permanent and contemporary registers —
the consi dar J^asH^ the books of the pontifical college, the
public collections of engraved laws and treaties — were
extant as could afford material for the annalist. That a
certain amount of work in The field both of law and history
must have been going on at Rome from a very early period,
is, of course, obvious ; but it was not till the time of the
Punic Wars that anything was produced in either field which
could very well be classed as literature.

In history as in poetry, the first steps were timidly made

28 Latin Literature. [I.

with the help of Greek models. The oldest and most
important of the early historians, Quintus Eabius_JKctor,
the contemporary of Naevius and Enn ius, actually wrote in
Greek, though a Latin version of his work certainly existed,
whether executed by himself or some other hand is doubtful,
at an almost contemporary date. Extracts are quoted from
it by the grammarians as specimens of the language of the
period. The scope of his history was broadly t he sa me as
that of the two great contem£oiary_poets. It was a narra-
tive of events starting from the legendary landing of Aeneas
in Italy, becoming more copious as it advanced, and dealing
with the events of the author's own time at great length
and from abundant actual knowledge. The work ended, so
far as can be judged, with the close of the second Punic
War. It long remained the great quany-iGF~«ubs£Quent
historians . Polybius undertook his own great work from
dissatisfaction with Pi ctor's p rejudice and in accura cy ; and
he is one of the chief authorities followed in the^ea^er
decads of Livy. A younger contemporary of Pjctor,
Lucius Cincius Alimentus, who commanded a Roman army
iiTthe war~against Hannibal, also used the Greek language
in his annals of his own life and times, and the same ap-
pears to be the case with the memoirs of other soldiers
and statesmen of the period. It is only half a century later
that we know certainly of historians who wrote in Latin.
The earliest of them, L ucius Cassius He mina, composed
his annals in the period between thedeatlToM^erence and
the revolution of the Gracchi; a more disHnguEKed suc-
cessor, Lu cius Calpurnius Piso Frugi, is better known as
one of the leading opponents of the revolution (he was con-
sul in the year of the tribuneship of Tiberius Gracchus)
than as the author of annals which were"certainly written
with candour and simplicity, and in a style where the epi-
thets " artless and elegant," used of them by Aulus Gellius,
need not be inconsistent with the more disparaging word
** meagre," with which they are dismissed by Cicero.

^^^F^'- " I f l_ lV'mi?**'^"

III.] The Early Jurists, 29

History might be written in Greek — as, indeed, through-
out the Republican and Imperial times it continued to be
-T^ by any Roman who was sufficiently conversant with that
language, in which models for every style of historical
composition were ready to his hand. In the province of
jurisprudence it was different^ Tfcre the Latin race owed
nothing to any foreig n in fluence or example; and the
development of Roman laW^ufsiied a straightforward and
uninterrupted course far beyond the limits of the classical
period, and after Rome itself had ceased to be the seat
even of a divided empire. The earliest juristic writings,
consisting of commentaries on collections of the semi-reli-
gious enactments, jn which po sitive l aw b egan, are attributed
to the period of ^the Samnite WarSyTong before Rome had
become a great Medit erran eaH^power. About 200 b.c.
two brothers, Publius and^ ggytus Aelius^ both citizens of
consular and censorial rank, published a systematic treatise
called Triperti^y which was long afterwards held in re-
verence as containing the ^mabula^iiris, the cradle out
of which the vast systems of lat ^ages jp rang. Fifty years
later, in the circle of the younger^Scipio, begins the illus-
trious line of theMucii Scaevolae. Three members of this
family, each a distinguished jui?st, rose to the consulate in
the stormy half-century between the Gracchi and Sulla.
The last and greatest of the three represented the ideal
Roman more nearly than any other citizen of his time.
The most eloquent of jurists and the most learned of
orators, he was at the same time a brilliant administrator
and a paragon of public and jpnyate-Adrjue ; and his murder
at the altar jofJVesta, in the Marian proscrip tion^ was uni-
versally thought the^most dreadful event of an age of
h orrors. His voluminous and exhaustive treatise .u^n Civil
Law renlained a text-book for centuries, and was a founda-
tion for the writings of all lateiJRoman jurists.

The combination of juriscoSult anSTorator in the younger
Scaevola was somewhat rare ; from an early period the two

^O Latin Literature. (1.

professions of jurist and pleader were sharply distinguished,
though both were pathways to the highest civic offices.
Neither his father nor his cousin (the other two of tHe^t nad)
was distinguished in oratory; nor were the two great
contemporaries of the former, who both published standard
works on civil law, Man ius Man ilius and M argus Jup ius
Brutus. The highest field for oratory was, of course, in
the politica l, and not in die purely tegal, sphere ; and the
unique Rbman constitution, an oligar chy c hosen almost
wholly by popular suffi^age, made the practice of oratory
more or less of a necessity to ^every politician. Well-
established tradition ascribed to the greatest statesman of
the earlier Republic, Appiu s, Claudius Caecu s. the first
institution of written oratory. His famous speech in the
senate against peace with Fyrrhus was cherished in Cicero's
time as one of the most precious literary treasu res of R ome.
From his time downwards the stream of writ ten ora tory
flowed, at first in a slender stream, which gathered to a
larger volume in the works of the elder Cato.

In the history of the half-century foUowmg the war with
Hannibal, Cato is certainly the most striking single^^figufe.
It is only as a man of letters that he has to be noticed here ;
and the character of a man of letters was, perhaps, the last
in which he would have i wished to be remembered or
\ praised. Yet the cynical* and indomitable old man, with
his rough humour, his narrow statesmanship, his obstinate
ultra-conse^atism, not only produced aTlarge quantity of
writings, but founded and transmitted to posterity a distinct
and important body of critical dogma and literary tradition.
The influence of Greece had, as we have alfelRiy^-^een,
begun to permeate the educat ed classes at Rome through
and through. Agahist this Greek influence, alike in liter-
ature and in manners, Cato struggled all his life with the
whole force of his powerful intellect and mordant wit;
yet it is most characteristic of the man that in his old £^e
he learned Greek himse lf, and read deeply in the master-

III.] Cato. 31

pieces of that Greek literature from which he was too
honest and too intellig^jatto be able to withhold his
admiration. While much oT^ntemporary literature was
launcHmg itself on the fatal course of imitation of Greek
models, and was forcing the Latin language into the
trammels of alien forms, Cato gave it a powerful impulse
towards a pure ly na tive, if a somewhat narrow and harsh
development. The na tional prose^ jilyrajiirp, of which he
may fairly be called the founder, was kept up till the decay
of Rome by a large and powerful minority of Latin writers.
What results it might have produced, if allowed unchecked
scope, can only be matter for conjecture; in the main
current of Latin literature the Greek influence was, on the
whole, triumphant ; Cato's was the losing side (if one may
so adapt the famous line of Lucan), and the men of genius
took the other.

The speeches of Cato, of which upwards of a hundred
and fifty were extant in Cicero's time, and which the
virtuosi of the age of Hadrian preferred, or professed to
prefer, to Cicero's own, are lost, with the exception of
inconsiderable fi-agments. The fragments show high ora-
torical gifts; shrewdness, humour, terse vigour and con-
trolled passion ; " somewhat confused and harsh," says a
late but competent Latin critic, " but strong and vivid as
it is possible for oratory to be." We have suffered a
heavier loss in his seven books of Origines, the work of his
old age. This may broadly be called ai^jiistorical work,
but it was history treated in a style of great latitude, the
meagre, disconnected method of the annalists alternating
with digressions into all kinds of subjects — geography,
ethnography, reminiscences of his own travels and ex-
periences, and the politics and social life of his own and
earlier times. It made no attempt to keep up either the
dignity or the continuity of history. His absence of method
made this work, however full of interest, the despair of
later historians : what were they to think, they plaintively

32 Latin Literature. [I.

asked, of an author who dismissed whole campaigns without
even giving the names of the generals, while he went into
profuse detail over one of the war-elephants in the Car-
thaginian army?

The only work of Cato*s which has been preserved in its
integrity is that variously known under the titles De Re
Rustica or De Agri Cultura, It is one of a number of treatises
of a severely didactic nature, which he published on various
subjects — agricultural, sanitary, military, and legal. This
treatise was primarily written for a friend who owned and
cultivated farms in Campania. It consists of a series of
terse and pointed directions following one on another,
with no attempt at style or literary artifice, but full of a
hard sagacity, and with occasional flashes of dry humour,
which suggest that Cato would have found a not wholly
uncongenial spirit in President Lincoln. A brief extract
from one of the earlier chapters is not without interest,
both as showing the practical Latin style, and as giving the
prose groundwork of Virgil's stately and beautiful embroidery
in the Georgics,

Opera omnia mature conficias face. Nam res rustica sic
est; si unam rem serofeceris, omnia opera sero fades. Stra-
menta si deerunt frondem iligneam legito ; earn substernito
ovibus bubusque. Sterquilinium magjium stude ut habeas,
Stercus sedulo conserva^ cum exportabis spargito et commin-
uito ; per autumnum eve hi to. Circum okas autumnitate
ablaqueato et stercus addito. Frondem populneam, uimeam,
querneam caeditOy per tempus cam condito, non peraridam^
pabulum ovibus. Item foenum cordum, sicilamenta de prato ;
ea arida condito. Post imbrem autumni rapinam^ pabulum^
lupinumque serito.

To the Virgilian student, every sentence here is full of
reminiscences.

In his partial yielding, towards the end of a long and
imcompromising life, to the rising tide of Greek influence,
Cato was probably moved to a large degree by his personal

III.] The Scipionic Circle, 33

admiration for the younger Scipio, whom he hailed as the
single great personality among younger statesmen, and to
whom he paid (strangely enough, in a line quoted from
Homer) what is probably the most splendid compliment
ever paid by one statesman to another. Scipio was the
centre of a school which included nearly the whole literary
impulse of his time. He was himself a distinguished orator
and a fine scholar ; after the conquest of Perseus, the royal
library was the share of the spoils of Macedonia which he
chose for himself, and bequeathed to his family. His
celebrated fiiend, Gains Laelius, known in Rome as " the
Wise," was not only an orator, but a philosopher, or deeply
read, at all events, in the philosophy of Greece. Another
member of the circle, Lucius Furius Philus, initiated that
connection of Roman law with the Stoic philosophy which
continued ever after to be so intimate and so far-reaching.
In this circle, too, Roman history began to be written in
Latin. Cassius Hemina and Lucius Calpurnius Piso have
been already mentioned; more intimately connected with
Scipio are Gains Fannius, the son-in-law of Laelius, and
Lucius Caelius Antipater, who reached, both in lucid and
copious diction and in impartiality and research, a higher
level than Roman history had yet attained. Literary
culture became part of the ordinary equipment of a states-
man ; a crowd of Greek teachers, foremost among them the
eminent philosopher, afterwards Master of the Portico,
Panaetius of Rhodes, spread among the Roman upper
classes the refining and illuminating influence of Greek
ideas and Attic style.

Meanwhile, in this Scipionic circle, a new figure had
appeared of great originality and force, the founder of a
kind of literature which, with justifiable pride, the Romans
claimed as wholly native and original. Gaius Lucilius was
a member of a wealthy equestrian family, and thus could
associate on equal terms with the aristocracy, while he was
removed from the necessity, which members of the great

34 Latin Literature. [I.

senatorial! houses could hardly avoid, of giving the best
of their time and strength to political and administrative
duties. After Terence, he is the most distinguished and
the most important in his literary influence ^ among the
friends of Scipio. The form of Uterature which he invented
and popularised, that of familiar poetry, was one which
proved singularly suited to the Latin genius. He speaks
of his own works under the name of Sermones, " talks " —
a name which was retained by his great successor, Horace ;
but the peculiar combination of metrical form with wide
range of subject and the pedestrian style of ordinary prose,
received in popular usage the name Satura, or " mixture."
The word had, in earlier times, been used of the irregu-
lar stage performances, including songs, stories, and semi-
dramatic interludes, which formed the repertory of strolling
artists at popular festivals. The extension of the name to
the verse of Lucilius indicates that written Uterature was
now rising to equal importance and popularity with the
spoken word.

Horace comments, not without severity, on the profuse
and careless production of Lucilius. Of the thirty books
of his Satires, few fragments of any length survive ; much,
probably the greater part of them, would, if extant, long
have lost its interest. But the loss of the bulk of his work
is a matter of sincere regret, because it undoubtedly gave a
vivid and detailed picture of the social life and the current
interests of the time, such as the Satires of Horace give of
Rome in the Augustan age. His criticisms on the public
men of his day were outspoken and unsparing ; nor had he
more reverence for established reputations in poetry than
in public life. A great deal of his work consisted in descrip-
tions of eating and drinking ; much, also, in lively accounts
of his own travels and adventures, or those of his friends.
One book of the Satires was occupied with an account of
Scipio's famous mission to the East, in which he visited the
courts of Egypt and Asia, attended by a retinue of only

III.] Lucilius. 35

five servants, but armed with the full power of the terrible
Republic. Another imitated by Horace in his story of the
journey to Brundusium, detailed the petty adventures, the
talk and laughter by roads and at inns, of an excursion of
his own through Campania and Bruttium to the Sicilian
straits. Many of the fragments deal with the literary con-
troversies of the time, going down even to the minutiae of
spelling and grammar; many more show the beginnings
of that translation into the language of common life of the
precepts of the Greek schools, which was consummated for
the world by the poets and prose-writers of the following
century. But, above all, the Satires of Lucilius were in the
fullest sense of the word an autobiography. The famous
description of Horace, made yet more famous for English
readers by the exquisite aptness with which Bos well placed
it on the title-page of his Life of Johnson —

Quo fit ut omnis
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
Vita senis —

expresses the true greatness of Lucilius. He invented a
literary method which, without being great, yields to no
other in interest and even in charm, and which, for its per-
fection, requires a rare and refined genius. Not Horace
only, nor all the satirists after Horace, but Montaigne and
Pepjrs also, belong to the school of Lucilius.

Such was the circle of the younger Scipio, formed in
the happy years — as they seemed to the backward gaze of
the succeeding generation — between the establishment of
Roman supremacy at the battle of Pydna, and the revolu-
tionary movement of Tiberius Gracchus. Fifty years of
stormy turbulence followed, culminating in the Social War
and the reign of terror under Marius and Cinna, and finally
stilled in seas of blood by the counter-revolution of Sulla.
This is the period which separates the Scipionic from the

y6 Latin Literature. p.

Ciceronian age. It was naturally, except in the single pro-
vince of political oratory, not one of great literary fertility ;
and a brief indication of the most notable authors of the
period, and of the lines on which Roman literature mainly
continued to advance during it, is all that is demanded or
possible here.

In oratory, this period by general consent represented
the golden age of Latin achievement. The eloquence of
both Jhe Gracchi was their great political weapon ; that of
Gains was the most powerful in exciting feeling that had
ever been known ; his death was mourned, even by fierce
political opponents, as a heavy loss to Latin literature. But
in the next generation, the literary perfection of oratory
was carried to an even higher point by Marcus Antonius
and Lucius Licinius Crassus. Both attained the highest
honours that the Republic had to bestow. By a happy
chance, their styles were exactly complementary to one
another; to hear both in one day was the highest in-
tellectual entertainment which Rome afforded. By this
time the rules of oratory were carefully studied and reduced
to scientific treatises. One of these^ the work of an other-
wise imknown Comificius, is still extant. It owes its
Y preservation to an erroneous tradition which ascribed it to
X the pen of Cicero, and regarded it as an earlier draft of
his treatise De Invention, That treatise goes over much the
same ground, and is often verbally copied from the earlier
work, of which it was, in fact, a mew edition revised and
largely rewritten.

Latin history during this period made considerable
progress. It was a common practice among statesmen to
write memoirs of their own life and times; among others
of less note, Sulla the dictator left at his death twenty-two
books of Commentarii Rcrum Gestarum, which were after-
wards' published by his secretary. In regular history the
most important name is that of Quintus Claudius Quadri-
garius. His work differed from those of the earlier annalists

III.] Pre-Ciccronian Prose, 37

in passing over the legendary period, and beginning with
the earliest authentic documents; in research and critical
judgment it reached a point only excelled by Sallust. His
style was formed on that of older annalists, and is therefore
somewhat archaic for the period. Considerable fragments,
including the well-known description of the single combat
in 361 B.C. between Titus Manlius Torquatus and the
Gallic chief, survive in quotations by Autus Gellius and the
archaists of the later Empire. More voluminous but less
valuable than the Annals of Claudius were those of his
contemporary, Valerius Antias, which formed the main
groundwork for the earlier books of Livy, and were largely
used by him even for later periods, when more trust-
worthy authorities were available. Other historians of this
period, Sisenna and Macer, soon fell into neglect — the
former as too archaic, the latter as too diffuse and rhetorical,
for literary permanence.

Somewhat apart from the historical writers stand the
antiquarians, who wrote during this period in large numbers,
and whose treatises filled the library from which, in the
age of Cicero, Varro compiled his monumental works. As
numerous probably were the writers of the school of Cato,
on husbandry, domestic economy, and other practical
subjects, and the grammarians and philologists, whose
works formed two other large sections in Varro's library.
On all sides prose was full of life and growth ; the complete
literary perfection of the age of Cicero, Caesar, and . Sallust
might already be foreseen as within the grasp of the near
future.

Latin poetry, meanwhile, hung in the balance. The first
great wave df the Greek impulse had exhausted itself in
Ennius and the later tragedians. Prose had so developed
that the poetical form was no longer a necessity for the
expression of ideas, as it had been in the palmy days of
Latin tragedy. The poetry of the future must be, so to
speak, poetry for its own sake, until some new tradition

38 Latin Literature. p

were formed which should make certain metrical forms
once more the recognised and traxiitional vehicle for certain
kinds of hterary expression. In the blank of poetry we
may note a translation of the Iliad into hexameters by one
Gnaeus Matins^ an4 the earliest known attempts at imitation
of the forms of Greek lyrical verse by an equally obscure
Laevius Melissus, as dim premonitions of the new growth
which Latin poetry was feeling after; but neither these,
nor the literary tragedies which still were occasionally pro-
duced by a survival of the fashions of an earlier age, are
of any account for their own sake. Prose and poetry stood
at the two opposite poles of their cycle; and thus it is
that, while the poets and prose-writers of the Ciceronian
age are equally imperishable in fame, the latter but repre-
sent the culmination of a broad and harmonious develop-
ment, while of the former, amidst but apart from the
beginnings of a new literary era, there shine, splendid like
stars out of the darkness, the two immortal lights of
Lucretius and Catullus.

o c

IV.

LUCRETIUS.

The age of Cicero, a term familiar to all readers as indi-
cating one of the culminating periods of literary history,
while its central and later years are accurately fixed, may
be dated in its commencement from varying limits. Cicero
was born in 1 06 . B.C., the year of the final conquest of
Jugurtha, and the year before the terrible Cimbrian disaster
at Orange : he perished in the proscription of the trium-
virate in December, 43 B.C. His first appearance in public
life was during the dictatorship of Sulla ; and either from
this date, or from one ten years later when the Sullan con-
stitution was re-established in a modified form by Pompeius
and Crassus in their first consulate, the Ciceronian age
extends over a space which approximates in the one case
to thirty, in the other to forty years. No period in ancient,
and few in comparatively modem history are so pregnant
with interest or so fully and intimately known. From the
comparative obscurity of the earlier age we pass into a
full blaze of daylight. It is hardly an exaggeration to say
that the Rome of Cicero is as familiar to modern English
readers as the London of Queen Anne, to readers in

modem France as the Paris of Louis Quatorze. We can
still follow with unabated interest the daily fluctuations of
its politics, the current gossip and scandal of its society,
the passing ^hions of domestic life as revealed in private

40 Latin Literature. P-

correspondence or the disclosures of the law courts. Yet
in the very centre of this brilliantly lighted world, one of
its most remarkable figures is veiled in almost complete
darkness. The great poem of Lucretius, O n the_ Nature of
Things, though it not only revealed a profound and extraor-
dinary genius, but marked an entirely new technical level
in Latin poetry, stole into the world all but imnoticed ; and
of its author's life, though a pure Roman of one of the great
governing families, only one or two doubtM and isolated
facts could be recovered by the curiosity of later commen-
tators. The single sentence in St. Jerome's Chronicle
which practically sums up the whole of our information
runs as follows, under the year 94 B.C. : —

Tiius Lucretius poeta nctscitury postea atnatorio poculo in
furorem versus cum aliquot libros per intervalla insaniae
conscripsisset quos postea Cicero emendavity propria se manu
interfecit anno cutatis xUiii.

Brief and straightforward as the sentence is, every clause
in it has given rise to volumes of controversy. Was
Lucretius bom in the year named, or is another tradition
correct, which, connecting his death with a particular event
in the youth of Virgil, makes him either be bom a few years
earlier or die a few years younger? Did he ever, whether
from a poisonous philtre or otherwise, lose his reason? and
can a poem which ranks among the great masterpieces of
genius have been built up into its stately fabric — for this is
not a question of brief lyrics like those of Smart or Cowper
— in the lucid intervals of insanity? Did Cicero have any-
thing to do with the editing of the unfinished poem? If
so, which Cicero — Marcus or Quintus ? and why, in either
case, is there no record of the fact in their correspondence,
or in any writing of the period? All these questions are
probably insoluble, and the notice of Jerome leaves the
whole life and personality of the poet stiU completely
hidden. Yet we have little or nothing else to go upon.
There is one brief and casual allusion in one of Cicero's

Lucretius. 41

letters of the year 54 b.c. : yet it speaks of " poems," not
the single great poem which we know; and most editors
agree that the text of the passage is corrupt, and must be
amended by the insertion of a noity though they differ on
the important detail of the particular clause in which it
should be inserted. That the earlier Augustan poets should
leave their great predecessor completely unnoticed is less
remarkable, for it may be taken as merely a part of that
curious conspiracy of silence regarding the writers of the
Ciceronian age which, whether under political pressure
or not, they all adopted. Even Ovid, never ungenerous
though not always discriminating in his praise, dismisses
him in a list of Latin poets with a single couplet of vague
eulogy. In the reactionary circles of the Empire, Lucretius
found recognition ; but the critics who, according to Tacitus,
ranked him above Virgil may be reasonably suspected of
doing so more from caprice than from rational conviction.
Had the poem itself perished (and all the extant manu-
scripts are copies of a single original), no one would have
thought that such a preference could be anything but a
piece of antiquarian pedantry, like the revival, in the same
period, of the plays of the early tragedians. But the fortu-
nate and slender chance which has preserved it shows that
their opinion, whether right or wrong, is one which at all
events is neither absurd nor unarguable. For in the De
Rerum Natura we are brought face to face not only with an
extraordinary literary achievement, but with a mind whose
profound and brilliant genius has only of late years, and
with the modem advance of physical and historical science,
been adequately recognised.

The earliest Greek impulse in Latin poetry had long been
exhausted ; and the fashion among the new generation was
to admire and study beyond all else the Greek poets of the
decadence, who are generally, and without any substantial
injustice, lumped together by the name of the Alexandrian
sdiooL The common quality in all this poetry was it&

42 Latin Literature. [I.

great Jieaming^ «nd-4ts^iemQteaess. .&Dm_jiature. It was
poetry written in a library ; it viewed the world through a
highly coloured medium of literary and artistic tradition.
The laborious perfectness of execution which the taste of
the time demanded was, as a rule, lavished on little subject^
patient carvings in ivory. One branch of the Alexandrian
school which was largely followed was that of the didactic
poets — Aratus, Nicander, Euphorion, and a host of others
less celebrated. Cicero, in mature life, speaks with some
contempt of the taste for Euphorion among his contempo-
raries. But he had himself, as a young man, followed the
fashion, and translated the Phaenomena of Aratus into won-
derfully polished and melodious hexameter verse.

Not unaffected by this fashion of the day, but turning
from it to older and nobler model^— 'Homer and Empe-
docles in Greek, Enniusdnr Latin — Lucretius conceived the
imposing scheme of a didacticpoem dealing with the whole
field of life and nature as interpreted by the Epicurean
pbilosaphy. He lived to carry out his work almost to com-
pletion. It here and there wants the final touches of
arrangement ; one or two discussions are promised and not
given ; some paragraphs are repeated, and others have not
been worked into their proper place ; but substantially, as in
the case of the Aeneid^ we have the complete poem before
us, and know perfectly within what limits it might have been
altered or improved by fiiller revision.

As pure literature, the Nature of Things has all the
defects inseparable from a didactic poem, that unstable com-
bination of discordant elements, and from a poem which is
not only didactic, but argumentative, and in parts highly
controversial. Nor are these difficulties in the least degree
evaded or smoothed over by the poet. As a teacher, he is
in deadly earnest ; as a controversialist, his first object is to
refute and convince. The graces of poetry are never for a
moment allowed to interfere with the fuU development of
an argument. Much of the poem is a chain of intricate

IV.] Lucretius. 43

reasoning hammered into verse by sheer force of hand. The
ardent imagination of the poet struggles through masses of
intractable material which no genius could wholly fuse into
a pure metal that could take perfect form. His language,
in the fine prologue to the fourth book of the poem, shows
his attitude toward^ his art very clearly.

Avia Pieridum peragro loca nuUius ante
Trita solo ; iuvat integros accedere fontes
Atque haurire^ iuvatque novos decerpere flores
Insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam
Unde prius nuUi velarint tempora Musae :
Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus, etartis
ReUgionutn animum nodis exsolvere pergOy \

Deinde quod obscura de re tarn lucidapango
Carmina, musaeo contingens cuncta iepore.

The joy and glory of his art come second in his mind to his
passionate love of- truth, and the deep moral purport of
what he believes to be the one true message for mankind.
The human race lies fettered by superstition and ignorance ;
his mission is to dispel their darkness by that light of truth
which is " clearer than the beams of the sun or the shining
shafts of day." Spinoza has been called, in a bold figure, " a
man drunk with God ; " the contemplation of the " nature
of things," the physical structure of the universe, and the
living and all but impersonate law which forms and sustains
it, has the same intoxicating influence over Lucretius.
God and man are alike to him bubbles on the ceaseless
stream of existence ; ^et they do not therefore, as they
have so often done in other philosophies, fade away to
a spectral thinness. His contemplation of existence is no
brooding over abstractions ; Nature is not in his view the
majestic and silent figure before whose unchanging eyes
the shifting shadow-shapes go and come; but an essen-
tial life^ manifesting itself in a million workings, creatrix^

44 Latin Literature. [I.

gubemans, daedala rerum. The universe is filled through all
its illimitable spaces by the roar of her working, the cease-
less unexhausted energy with which she alternates life. and
death.

'o'our own age the Epicurean philosophy has a double
interest. Not only was it a philosophy of life and conduct,
but, in the effort to place life and conduct under ascertain-
able physical laws, it was led to frame an extremely detailed
and ingenious body of natural philosophy, which, partly
from being based on really sound postulates, partly from
a happy instinct in connecting phenomena, still remains
interesting and valuable. To the Epicureans, indeed, as
to all ancient thinkers, the scientific method as it is now
understood was unknown ; and a series of unverified gen-
eralisations, however brilliant and acute, is not the true
\ way towards knowledge. But it still remains an astonishing
\ fact that many of the most important physical discoveries
of modern times are hinted at or even expressly stated by
Lucretius. The general outlines of the^atoniic__dQClI^e
have long been accepted as in the main true; in all im-
portant features it is superior to any other physical theory
of the universe which existed up to the seventeenth century.
In his theory of light Lucreti«s>jg^.Jn^4idvance of. Newton.
In his theory of chemical afiinities (for he describes the
thing though the nomenclature was unknown to him) he
was in advance of Lavoisier. In his theory of the ultimate
constitution of the atom he is in striking agreement with the
views of the ablest living physicists. The essential fimction
of science — to reduce apparently disparate phenomena to
the expressions of a single law — is not with him the object
of a moment's doubt or uncertainty.

Towards real progress in knowledge two things are alike
indispensable : a true scientific method, iind . imaginative
insight. The former is, in the main, a creation of the
modem world, nor was Lucretius here in advance of his
age. But in the latter quality he is unsurpassed, if not

I I mm^^^sfmSS^^^ni

IV.] Lucretius. 45

unequalled. Perhaps this is even clearer in another field
of science, that which has within the last generation risen
to such immense proportions under the name of anthropplo^
Thirty years ago it was the first and second books of the
De Rerum Natura which excited the greatest enthusiasm in
the scientific world. Now that the atomic theory has passed
into the rank of received doctrines, the brilliant sketch, given
in the fifth book, of the beginnings of life upon the earth,
the evolution of man and the progress of human society, is
the portion of the poem in which his scientific imagination
is displayed most astonishingly. A Roman aristocrat, living
among a highly cultivated society, Lucretius had been yet
endowed by nature with the primitive instincts of the savage.
He sees the ordinary processes of everyday Hfe — weaving,
carpentry, metal-working, even such specialised forms of
manual art as the polishing of the s urface of marble — with
the fresh eye of one who sees them all for the first time.
Nothing is to him indistinct through famiharity. In virtue
of this absolute clearness of vision it costs him no effort to
throw himself back into prehistoric conditions and the
wild life of the earliest men. Even further than this he
can pierce the strange recesses of the past. Before his
imagination the earth rises swathed in tropical forests,
and all strange forms of life issuing and jostling one
another for existence in the steaming warmth of per-
petual summer. Among a thousand types that flowered
and fell, the feeble form of primitive man is distinguished,
without fire, without clothing, without articulate speech.
Through the midnight of the woods, shivering yat the cries
of the stealthy-footed prowlers of the darkness, he crouches
huddled in fallen leaves, waiting for the rose of dawn. Little
by little the prospect clears round him. The branches of
great trees, grinding one against another in the windy
forest, break into a strange red flower ; he gathers it and
hoards it in his cave. There, when wind and rain beat
without, the hearth-fire burns through the winter, and round

46 Latin Literature. [I.

it gathers that other marvellous invention of which the
hearth-fire became the mysterious symbol, the family.
From this point the race is on the full current of progress,
of which the remainder of the book gives an account as
essentially true as it is incomparably briUiant. If we
consider how little Lucre|ius had to go upon ia.Jhis>
reconstruction of lost history, his imaginative insight seems
almost miraculous. Even for the later stages of human
progress he had to rely mainly pji- the eye which saw deep
below the surface into the elementary structure of civilisation.
There was no savage life within the scope of his actual
observation. Books wavered between traditions of an
impossible golden age and fragments of primitive legend
which were then quite unintelligible, and are only now
giving up their secret under a rigorous analysis. Further
back, and beyond the rude civilisation of the earlier
races of Greece and Italy, data wholly failed. We have
supplemented, but hardly given more life to, his picture of
the first beginnings, by evidence drawn from a thousand
sources then unknown or unexplored — from coal-measures
and mud-deposits, Pictish barrows and lacustrine midden-
steads, remote tribes of hidden Africa and islands of the
Pacific Sea.

Such are the characteristics which, to one or another
epoch of modem times, give the poem of Lucretius so
unique an interest. But for these as for all ages, its per-
manent value must He mainly in more universal qualities.
History and physical science alike are in all poetry ancillary
to ideas. It is in his moral temper, his profound insight
into life, that Lucretius rises to ffiie greatest heights of
thought and the utmost perfection of language. The
Epicurean philosophy, in his hands, takes all- the moral
fervour, the ennobling influence of a religion. The
depth of his religious instinct may be measured by the
passion of his antagonism to what he regarded as
superstition. Human life in his eyes was made wretched,

IV.] Lucretius. 47

mean, and cruel by one great cause — the fear of death and
of what happens after it. That death is not to be feared,
.that nothing happens after it, is the keystone of his whole
system. It is after an accumulation of seventeen proofs,
hurled one upon another at the reader, of the mortality of
the soul, that, letting himself loose at the highest emotional
and imaginative tension, he breaks into that wonderful
passage, which Virgil himself never equalled, and which in
its lofty passion, its piercing tenderness, the stately roll of
its cadences, is perhaps unmatched in human speech.

" Jam iam non domus accipiet te laeta^ neque uxor
Optima^ nee dulces occurrent oscula nati
Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent:
Non poteris factis florentibus esse, tuisque
Praesidium: misero misere^^ aiunt, ^^ omnia ademit
Una dies infesta Ubi totpraemia vitae ..."

" * Now no more shall a glad home and a true wife welcome
thee, nor darling children race to snatch thy first kisses and
touch thy heart with a sweet and silent content ; no more
mayest thou be prosperous in thy doings and a defence to
thine own : alas and woe ! ' say they, * one disastrous day
has taken all these prizes of thy life away from thee * — but
thereat they do not add this, * and now no more does any
longing for these things beset thee.* This did their thought
but clearly see and their speech follow, they would release
themselves from great heartache and fear. ' Thou, indeed,
as thou art sunk in the sleep of death, wilt so be for the
rest of the ages, severed from all weary pains; but we,
while close by us thou didst turn ashen on the awful pyre,
made unappeasable lamentation, and everlastingly shall
time never rid our heart of anguish.' Ask we then this of
him, what there is that is so very bitter, if sleep and peace
be the conclusion of the matter, to make one fade away in
never-ending grief?

''Thus too men often do when, set at the feast, they hold

48 Latin Literature. p.

their cups and shade their faces with garlands, saying sadly,
* Brief is this joy for wretched men ; soon will it have been,
and none may ever after recall it ! ' as if this were to be
first and foremost of the ills of death, that thirst and dry
burning should waste them miserably, or desire after any-
thing else beset them. For not even then does any one
miss himself and his life when soul and body together are
deep asleep and at rest ; for all we care, such slumber might
go on for ever, nor does any longing after ourselves touch
us then, though then those first-beginnings through our
body swerve away but a very little from the movements that
bring back the senses when the man starts up and gathers
himself out of sleep. Far less, therefore, must we think
death concerns us, if less than nothing there can be ; for a
greater sundering in the mass of matter follows upon death,
nor does any one awake and stand, whom the cold stoppage
of death once has reached.

" Yet again, were the Nature of things suddenly to utter
a voice, and thus with her own lips upbraid one of us,
*What ails thee so, O mortal, to let thyself loose in too
feeble grievings? why weep and wail at death? for has
thy past life and overspent been sweet to thee, and not all
the good thereof, as if poured into a pierced vessel, has
run through and joylessly perished, why dost thou not retire
like a banqueter filled with life, and calmly, O fool, take thy
peaceful sleep? But if all thou hast had is perished and
spilt, and thy life is hateful, why seekest thou yet to add
more which shall once again all perish and fall joylessly
away? why not rather make an end of life and labour?
for there is nothing more that I can contrive and invent
for thy delight; all things are the same for ever. Even
were thy body not yet withered, nor thy limbs weary and
worn, yet all things remain the same, didst thou go on to
live all the generations down, nay, even more, wert thou
never doomed to die ' — what do we answer? "

It is in passages of which the two hundred lines beginning

i,%^

IV.] Lucretius. 49

thus are the noblest instance, passages of profound and
majestic broodings over life aAd death, that the long rolling
weight of the Lucretian hexameter tells with its full force.
For the golden cadence of poesy we have to wait till Virgil ;
but the strain that Lucretius breathes through bronze is
statelier and more sonorous than any other in the stately
and sonorous Roman speech. Like Naevius a century and
a half before, he might have left the proud and pathetic
lines on his tomb that, after he was dead, men forgot to
speak Latin in Rome. He stands side by side with Julius
Caesar in the perfect purity of his language. The writing
of the next age, whether prose or verse, gathered richness
and beauty from alien sources ; if the poem of Lucretius
had no other merit, it would be a priceless document as
a model of the purest Latin idiom in the precise age of its
perfection. It follows from this that in certain points of
technique Lucretius was behind his age, or rather, deliberately
held aloof from the movement of his age towards a more
intricate and elaborate art. The wave of Alexandrianism
only touched him distantly; he takes up the Ennian
tradition where Ennius had left it, and puts into it the
immensely increased faculty of trained expression which
a century of continuous literary practice, and his own
admirably clear and quick intelligence, enable him to
supply. The only Greek poets mentioned by him are
Homer and Empedocles. His remoteness from the main
current of contemporary literature is curiously parallel to
that of Milton. The Epicurean philosophy was at this
time, as it never was either earher or later, the predominant
creed among the ruling class at Rome : but except in so far
as its shallower aspects gave the motive for Hght verse, it
was as remote from poetry as the Puritan theology of
the seventeenth century. In both cases a single poet of
immense genius was also deeply penetrated with the spirit
of a creed. In both cases his poetical affinity was with the
poets of an earlier day, and his poetical manner something

50 Latin Literature, [L

absolutely peculiar to himself. Both of them under this
strangely mixed impulse set themselves to embody their
creed in a great work of art. But the art did not appeal
strongly to sectaries, nor the creed to artists. The De
Rerum Natura and the Paradise Lost, while they exercised
a profound influence over later poets, came silently into the
world, and seem to have passed over the heads of their
immediate contemporaries. There is yet . another point of
curious resemblance between them. Every student of
Milton knows that the only English poet from whom he
systematically borrowed matter and phrase was one of the
third rate, who now would be almost forgotten but for the
use Milton made of him. For one imitation of Spenser or
Shakespeare in the Paradise Lost it would be easy to adduce
ten — not mere coincidences of matter, but direct trans-
ferences — of Sylvester's Du^artas. While Lucretius was a
boy, Cicero publisEedrtKeversion in Latin hexameters of the
Phaenomena and Prognostica of Aratus to which reference
has already been made. These poems consist of only
between eleven and twelve hundred lines in all, but had,
in the later Alexandrian period, a reputation (like that of
the Sepmaine of Du Bartas) far in excess of their real
merit, and were among the most powerful influences in
founding the new style. The many imitations in I/icretius
of the extant fragments of these Ciceronian versions show
that he must have studied their vocabulary and versification
with minute care. The increased technical possibilities
shown by them to exist in the Latin hexameter — for in
them, as in nearly all his permanent work, Cicero was
mastering the problem of making his own language " an
adequate vehicle of sustained expression — may even have
been the determining influence that made Lucretius adopt
this poetical form. Till then it may have been just possible
that native metrical forms might still reassert themselves.
Inscriptions of the last century of the Republic show that
the satumian still lingered in use side by side with the

IV.]

Lucretius,

rude popular hexameters which were gradually displacmg
it ; and the Punic War of Naevius was still a classic. Lu-
cretius' choice of the hexameter, and his definite conquest
of it as a medium of the richest and most varied expression,
placed the matter beyond recall. The technical imperfec-
tions which remained in it were now reduced within a vis-
ible compass ; its power to convey sustained argument, to
express the most delicate shades of meaning, to adjust
itself to the greatest heights and the subtlest tones of
emotion, was already acquired when Lucretius handed it on
to Virgil. And here, too, as well as in the wide field of
literature with which his fame is more intimately connected,
from the actual impulse given by his own early work and
heightened by admiration of his brilliant maturity, even
more than from the dubious tradition of his editorial care
after the poet*s death, the glory of the Ciceronian age is in
close relation to the personal genius of Cicero.

LTSic poetry: caixjllds.

Contemporary with Lucretius, but, unlike him, living in
the full whiii and glare of Roman life, was a group of
young men who were professed followers of the Alexandrian
schooL In the thirty years which separate the Civil war
and tiie Sullan restoration from the sombre period that
opened with the outbreak of hostflities between Caesar
and the senate, social life at Rome among the upper classes
was unusually brilliant and exciting. The outward polish
of Greek civilisation was for the first time fully mastered,
and an intelligent interest in art and Uterature was the
£ishion of good society. The '' young man about town,"
whom we find later fully developed in the poetry of Ovid,
sprang into existence, but as the government was still in
the hands of the aristocracy, ^hion and poUtics were
intimately intermingled, and the lighter Uterature of the
day touched grave issues on every side. The poems of
CatuUus are full of references to his friends and his
enemies among this group of writers. Two of the former,
Cinna and Calvus, were poets of considerable importance.
Gains Helvius Cinna — somewhat doubtfully identified with
the " Cinna the poet " who met such a tragical end at the
hands of the populace after Caesar's assassination — carried
the Alexandrian movement to its most uncompromising
conclusions. His iame (and that frune was very great)

v.] Cinna and Calvus. 53

2
rested on a short poem called Zmyrna, over which he spent
ten years' labour, and which, by subject and treatment alike,
carried the Alexandrian method to its furthest excess. In
its recondite obscurity it outdid Lycophron himself. More
than one grammarian of the time made a reputation solely
by a commentary on it. It throws much light on the
peculiar artistic position of Catullus, to bear in mind that
this masterpiece of frigid pedantry obtained his warm and
evidently sincere praise.

The other member of the triad. Gains Licinius Macer
Calvus, one of the most brilliant men of his time, was too
deeply plunged in politics to be more than an accomplished
amateur in poetry. Yet it must have been more than his
intimate friendship with Catullus, and their common fate
of too early a death, that made the two names so con-
stantly coupled afterwards. By the critics of the Silver
Age, no less than by Horace and Propertius, the same idea
is frequently repeated, which has its best-known expression
in Ovid's beautiful invocation in his elegy on Tibullus —

Obvius huic venias, hedera iuvenilia cinctus
Tetnpora, cum Calvo, docte Catulie, tuo.

We must lament the total loss of a volume of lyrics which
competent judges thought worthy to be set beside that of
his wonderful friend.

Gains Valerius Catullus of Verona, one of the greatest
names of Latin poetry, belonged, like most of this group,
to a wealthy and distinguished family, and was introduced
at an early age to the most fashionable circles of the
capital. He was just so much younger than Lucretius that
the*Marian terror and the SuUan proscriptions can hardly
have left any strong traces on his memory ; when he died,
Caesar was still fighting in Gaul, and the downfall of the
Republic could only be dimly foreseen. In time, no less
than in genius, he represents the fine flower of the
Ciceroniaa age. He was about five and twenty when the

54 Latin Literature. [I.

famous liaison began between him and the lady whom he
has immortalised under the name of Lesbia. By birth a
Claudia^ and wife of her cousin, a Caecilius Metellus, she
belonged by blood and marriage to the two proudest famihes
of the inner circle of the aristocracy. Clodia was seven
years older than Catullus ; but that only made their mutual
attraction more irresistible : and the death of her husband
in the year after his consulship, whether or not there was
foundation for the common rumour that she had poisoned
him, was an incident that seems to have passed almost
unnoticed in the first fervour of their passion. The story of
infatuation, revolt, relapse, fresh revolt and fresh entangle-
ment, lives and breathes in the verses of Catullus. It was
after their final rupture that Catullus made that journey to
Asia which gave occasion to his charming poems of travel.
In the years which followed his return to Italy, he con-
tinued to produce with great versatility and force, making
experiments in several new styles, and devoting great pains
to an elaborate metrical technique. Feats of learning and
skill alternate with political verses, into which he carries
all his violence of love and hatred. But while these later
poems compel our admiration, it is the earlier ones which
win and keep our love. Though the old liquid note ever
and again recurs, the freshness of these first lyrics, in which
life and love and poetry are all alike in their morning
glory, was never to be wholly recaptured. Nor did he
live to settle down on any matured second maimer. He
was thirty-three at the utmost — perhaps not more than
thirty — when he died, leaving behind him the volume
of poems which sets him as the third beside Sappho and
Shelley.

The order of the poems in this volume seems to be an
artificial compromise between two systems — one an arrange-
ment by metre, and the other by date of composition. In
the former view the book falls into three sections — the pure
lyrics, the idyllic pieces^ and the poems in elegiac verse.

v.] Catullus. 55

The central place is oca-'pied by the longest and most
elaborate, if not the most successful, of his poems, the epic
idyl on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Before this
are the lyrics, chiefly in the phalaecean eleven-syllabled
verse which Catullus made so peculiarly his own, but in
iambic, sapphic, choriambic, and other metres also, winding
up with the fine epithalamium written for the marriage of
his friends, Mallius and Vinia. The transition from this
group of lyrics to the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis is made
with great skill through another wedding-chant, an idyl in
form, but approaching to a lyric in tone, without any
personal allusions, and not apparently written for any
particular occasion. Finally comes a third group of poems,
extending to the end of the volume, all written in elegiac
verse, but otherwise extremely varied in date, subject, and
manner. The only poem thus left unaccounted for, the
Aiys^ is inserted in the centre of the volume, between the
two hexameter poems, as though to make its wild metre
and rapid movement the more striking by contrast with
their smooth and languid rhythms. Whether the arrange-
ment of the whole book comes from the poet's own hand
is very doubtful. His dedicatory verses, which stand at
the head of the volume, are more probably attached to the
first part only, the book of lyrics. Catullus almost cer-
tainly died in S4--?'P^i- the only positive dates assignable to
particular poems, in either the lyric or the elegiac section,
alike lie within the three or four years previous, and, while
no strict chronological order is followed, the pieces at
the beginning of the book are almost certainly the earliest,
and those at the end among the latest.

Among the poems of Catullus, those connected with
Lesbia hold the foremost place, and, as expressions of direct
personal emotion, are unsurpassed, not merely in Latin, but
in any literature. There are no poems of the growth of
love among them; from the first, Lesbia appears as the
absolute mistress of her lover's heart :

56 Latin Literature. \l.

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus^
Rutnoresque senutn severiorum
Omnes unius aestimemus assis.
Soles occidere et redire possunt ;
Nobis cum seifiel occidit brevis lux
Nox est perpetua una dormienda : —

thus he cries in the first intoxication of his happiness, as
yet ignorant that the brief light of his love was to go out
before noon. Gloria soon showed that the advice not to
care for the opinion of the world was, in her case, infinitely
superfluous. That intolerable pride which was the pro-
verbial curse of the Claudian house took in her the form
of a flagrant disregard of all conventions. In the early
days of their love, Catullus only felt, or only expressed, the
beautiful side of this recklessness. His affection for Clodia
had in it, he says, goinething of the tenderness of parents
for their children ; and the poems themselves bear this out.
We do not need to read deeply in Catullus to be assured
that merely animal passion ran as strong in him as it ever
did in any man. But in the earlier poems to Lesbia all
this turns to air and fire ; the intensity of his love melts
its grosser elements into one white flame. There is hardly
even a word of Lesbia's bodily beauty ; her great blazing
eyes have only come down to us in the sarcastic allusions
made to them by Cicero in his speeches and letters. As
in some of the finest lyrics of Burns, with whom Catullus,
as a poet of love, has often been compared, the ardency of
passion has effected for quintessential moments the work
that long ages may work out on the whole fabric of a
human soul — Concretam exemit labent purumque reliquit
aetherium sensum atque aurdi simplicis ignem.

But long after the rapture had passed away the enthral-
ment remained. Lesbia's first infidelities only riveted her
lover's chains —

v.] Catullus. 57

Atnantetn iniuria talis
Cogit amare magis ;

then he hangs between love and hatred, in the poise of
soul immortalised by him in the famous verse —

Odt et atno : quare id faciam fortasse requiris ;
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

There were ruptures and reconciliations, and renewed
ruptures and repeated returns, but through them all, while
his love hardly lessens, his hatred continually grows, and
the lyrical cry becomes one of the sharpest agony : through
protestations of fidelity, through wails over ingratitude, he
sinks at last into a stupor only broken by moans of pain.
Then at last youth reasserts itself, and he is stung into ne\f
life by the knowledge that he has simply dropped out of
Lesbia's existence. His final renunciation is no longer
addressed to her deaf ears, but flung at her in studied
insult through two of the associates of their old revels in
Rome.

Cum suis vivat vakatque moechis
Quos siniul complexa tenet trecentos
Nullum amans vere^ sed identidem * omnium
Ilia rumpens —

so the hard clear verse flashes out, to melt away in the
dying fall, the long-drawn sweetness of the last words
of all —

Nee meum respectet ut ante amorem
Qui illius culpa cecidit, velutprati
Ultimi floSy praetereunte postquam
Tactus aratro est.

Foremost among the other lyrics of Catullus which have

• The repetition of this word from the lovely lyric, Ille mi par essg,
where it occtus in the same place of the verse, is a stroke of subtle and
daring art

58 Latin Literature. [L

a personal reference are those concerned with his journey
to Asia, and the dea b in the Troad of the deeply loved
brother whose tomb be visited on that journey. The
excitement of travel and the delight of return have never
been more gracefully touched than in these htde lyrics, of
which every other line has become a household word, the
lam ver egelidos referttepores^ and the lovely Paene insula rum
Sirmio insularumque^ whose cadences have gathered a fresh
sweetness in the hands of Tennyson. But a higher note is
reached in one or two of the short pieces on his brother's
death, which are lyrics in all but technical name. The
finest of these has all the delicate simplicity of an epitaph by
the best Greek artists, Leonidas or Antipater or Simonides
himself, and combines with it the Latin dignity, and a range
of tones, from the ocean-roll of its opening hexameter,
Multas per gentes et multa per (uquora vectus^ to the sobbing
wail of the Atque in perpetuum f rater aTfe atque vale in
which it dies away, that is hardly equalled except in some
of Shakespeare's sonnets.

It is in these short lyrics of personal passion or emotion
that the genius of Catullus is mofiU unique; but the same
high qualities appear in the few specimens he has left of
more elaborate l)rrical architecture, the Ode to Diana, the
marriage-song for Mallius and Vinia, and the Atys, TTie
first of these, brief as it is, has a breadth and grandeur of
manner which — as in the noble fragment of Keats' Ode to
Maia — lift it into the rank of great masterpieces. The
epithalamium, on the other hand, with which the book of
lyrics ends, while very simple in structure, is large in scale.
It is as much longer than the rest of the lyrics as the
marriage-song which stands at the end of In Memoriam
is than the other sections of that poem. In the charm
of perfect simplicity it equals the finest of his lyrics ; but
besides this, it has in its clear ringing music what is for
this period an almost unique premonition of the new world
that ro§e put pf the darkness of the Middle Ages, th§

v.] Catullus, 59

world that had mvented bells and church-organs, and
had added a new romantic beauty to love and marriage.
With a richness of phrase that recalls the Song of Solomon,
the verses clash and swing : Open your bars, O gates /
the bride is at hand! Lo, how the torches shake out their
splendid tresses / . . . Even so in a rich lords garden-close
might stand a hyacinth- flower, Lo, the torches shake out
their golden tresses; go forth, O bride! Day wanes; go
forth, O bride ! And the verse at the end, about the
baby on its mother's lap —

Torquatus volo parvulus
Matris e gremio suae
Porrigens teneras manus
Dulce rideat ad patrem
I / Semihiante labello —

is as incomparable ; not again till the Florentine art of the
fifteenth centtiry was the picture drawn with so true and
tender a hand.

Over the Atys modem criticism has exhausted itself
without any definite result. The accident of its being the
only Latin poem extant in the peculiar galliambic metre
has combined with the nature of the subject * to induce a
tradition about it as though it were the most daring and ex-
traordinary of Catullus* poems. The truth is quite different.
It stands midway between the lyrics and the idyls in being
a poem of most studied and elaborate artifice, in which
Catullus has chosen, not the statelier and more familiar
rhythms of the hexameter or elegiac, but one of the Greek
lyric metres, of which he had already introduced several
others into Latin. As a tour de force in metrical form
it is very remarkable, and probably marks the highest point
of Latin achievement in imitation of the more complex

* The subject was quite a usual one among the Alexandrian poets
whom Catullus read and imitated. Cf. Anthologia Palatma, vii*
217-230.

^ Latm LtUruiMn^ [L

Gw^ tnneitfies^ Ai$ a Ijric poem it presencs^ eivn in ib
Iw^libfy ;a»tii6d<al jEtroctKare^ nEodi of the dscct fixoe and
$j|09piiciit^ vlucb nasfk afl Cattalks' best Ijiics ; tint it goes
t^oiMl tfei^^ 'Or that — as n> often rq^eated — it txansoends
botb the i4^ and die bnefer Ijiics in snstsuned beanty and
ps^k^ cannot be held by any sane jndgment.

Vimi br elaboration could lead CatoDns is shown in the
long idyllic poem on the Marriage of Pdtus and Thttis.
H#re he enttoely abandons the lyric manner, and ad^entores
mi a new field, in which he does not prove reiy soccessfoL
The poem is full of great beauties of detail ; bat as a whcde
it \sk cloying without bring satis^ring. For~^~Tew lines
together Catullus can write in hexameter more exquisitely
than any other Latin poet. The description in this piece
of the little breeze that rises at dawn, beginning Hie quaUs
flatu placidum mare matutino^ like the more ^mous lines in
bl» other idyllic poem —

Ut flos in sepHs secretum nascitur hortis,
Jgnotus pecorif nullo contusus aratrOy
Quern mulcent aurae^ fir mat sol, educat imber;
MulH ilium pueri, multae optavere puellae —

has an intangible and inexpressible beauty such as never
recurs In the more mature art of greater masters. But
Catullus has no narrative gift ; his use of the hexameter is
confined to a limited set of rhythms which in a poem about
the length of a book of the Georgics become hopelessly
monotonous; and it finally stops, rather than ends, when
the writer (as is already the case with the reader) grows tired
of it. It is remarkable that the poet who in the lightness
and speed of his other metres is unrivalled in Latin, should,
when he attempts the hexameter, be more languid and
heavy, not only than his successors, but than his con-
temporaries. Here, as in the elaborate imitations of
Canimachua with which he tested his command of the
Latin elegiac^ he is weak because he wanders off the true

v.] Catullus. 6l

line, not from any failure in his own special gift, which was
purely and simply lyrical. When he uses the elegiac verse
to express his own feeling, as in the attacks on political or
personal enemies, it has the same direct lucidity (as of an
extraordinarily gifted child) which is the essential charm of
his lyrics.

It is just this quality, this clear and almost terrible sim-
plicity, that puts Catullus in a place by himself among the
Latin poets. Where others labour in the ore of thought and
gradually forge it out into sustained expression, he sees
with a single glance, and does not strike a second time.
His imperious lucidity is perfectly unhesitating in its ac-
tion : whether he is using it for the daintiest flower of sen-
timent — fair passions and bountiful pities and loves without
stain — or for the expression of his vivid passions and hatreds
in some flagrant obscenity or venomous insult, it is alike
straight and reckless, with no scruple and no mincing of
^\7Qrds ; in Mr. Swinburne's curiously true and vivid phrase,
he " makes mouths at our speech " when we try to follow him.

With the death of Catullus and Calvus, an era in Latin
poetry definitely ends. Only thirteen or fourteen years later
a new era begins with the appearance of Virgil ; iut this
small interval of time is sufficient to mark the passage ixCraa
one age — we might almost say from one civiHsation — to
another. During these years poetry was almost silent, while
the Roman world shook with continuous civil war and the
thunder of prodigious armies. The school of minor
Alexandrian poets still indeed continued ; the " warblers of
Euphorion" with their smooth rhythms and elaborate
finesse of workmanship are spoken of by Cicero as still
numerous and active ten years after Catullus' death. But
their artifice had lost the gloss of novelty ; and the unex-
ampled enthusiasm which greeted the appearance of the
Eclogues was due less perhaps to their intrinsic excellence
than to the relief with which Roman poetry shook itself free
from the fetters of so rigorous and exhausting a convention.

VI.

aCERO.

Meanwhile, in the last age of the Republic, Latin prose
had reached its full splendour in the hands of the most
copious and versatile master of style whom the Graeco-
Roman world had yet produced. The claims of Cicero to
a place among the first rank of Roman statesmen have
been fiercely canvassed by modern critics ; and both in
oratory and philosophy some excess of veneration once
paid to him has been replaced by an equally excessive
depreciation. The fault in both estimates lay in the fact
that they were alike based on secondary issues. Cicero's
unique and imperishable glory is not, as he thought himself,
that of having put down the revolutionary movement of
Catiline, nor, as later ages thought, that of having rivalled
Demosthenes in the Second Philippic, or confuted atheism
in the De Natura Deorum, It is that he created a lan-
guage which remained for sixteen centuries that of the
civilised world, and used that language to create a style
which nineteen centuries have not replaced, and in some
respects have scarcely altered. He stands in prose, like
Virgil in poetry, as the bridge between the ancient and
modem world. Before his time, Latin prose was, from a
wide point of view, but one among many local ancient
dialects. As it left his hands, it had become a universal
language, one which had definitely superseded all others,
Greek included, as the type of civihsed expression, r

VI.] Cicero, 63

Thus the apparently obsolete criticism which ranked
Cicero together with Plato and Demosthenes, if not above
them, was based on real facts, though it may be now
apparent that it gave them a wrong interpietation. Even
scholars may admit with but slight reluctance that the
prose of the great Attic writers is, like the sculpture of
their contemporary artists, a thing remote from modem
life, requiring much training and study for its appreciation,
and confined at the best to a hmited circle. But Ciceronian
prose is practically the prose of the human race ; not only
of the Roman empire of the first and second centuries,
but of Lactantius and Augustine, of the mediaeval 'Church,
of the earlier and later Renaissance, and even now, when
the Renaissance is a piece of past history, of the modern
world to which the Renaissance was the prelude.

The life of Cicero as a man of letters may be divided
into four periods, which, though not of course wholly
distinct from one another, may be conveniently treated as
separate for the purpose of criticism./ The first is that of
his immature early writings — poems, treatises on rhetoric,
and forensic speeches — covering the period from his boy-
hood in the Civil wars, to the first consulship of Pompeius
and Crassus, in 70 b.c. The second, covering his life as
ail active statesman of the first prominence, begins with
the Verrine orations of that year, and goes down to the
consulship of Julius Caesar, in 59 B.C. These ten years
mark his culmination as an orator ; and there is no trace
in them of any large literary work except in the field of
oratory. In the next year came his exile, from which
indeed he returned within a twelvemonth, but as a broken
statesman. From this po|nt to the outbreak of the Civil
war in 50 B.C., the third period continues the record of his
great speeches ; but they are no longer at the old height,
nor do tto^ occupy his full energy ; and now he breaks new
ground in two fields with works of extraordinary brilliance,
the De Oratore and the De Republica, During the heat 01

64 Latin Literature. [I.

the Civil war there follows a period of comparative silence,
but for his private correspondence ; then comes the fourdi
and final period, perhaps the most brilliant of all, the four
years from 46 b,c. to h's death in 43 b,c. The few speeches
of the years 46 and 45 show hut the ghost of former
splendours; he was turning perforce to other subjects.
The poUtical philosophy of the De RepuhUca is resumed
in the De Legibus ; the De Oratore is continued by the
history of Roman oratory known as the Brutus. Then, as
if realising that his true work in life was to mould his
native language into a vehicle of abstract thought, he sets
to work with amazing swiftness and copiousness to re-
produce a whole series of Greek philosophical treatises,
in a style which, for flexibiUty and grace, recalls the Greek
of the best period — the De Finibus^ the Academics , the
TusculanSy the De Natura Deorum^ the De Divinaiione^ the
De Officiis. Concurrently with these, he continues to throw
off fiirther manuals of the theory and practice of oratory^
intended in the first instance for the use of the son who
proved so thankless a pupil, the ParHtiones Oratoriae^ the
Tofica^ the De Optimo Genere Oraiorum, Meanwhile, the
Roman world had again been plunged into civil war by the
assassination of Caesar. Cicero's political influence was
no longer great, but it was still worth the while of younger
and more unscrupulous statesmen to avail themselves of
his eloquence by assumed deference and adroit flattery.
The series of fourteen speeches delivered at Rome against
Marcus Antonius, between September, 44, and April, 43
B.C., were the last outburst of firee Roman oratory before
the final extinction of the Republic. That even at the
time there was a sense of their unreality — of their being
rhetorical exercises to interest the capital while the real
issues of the period were being fought out elsewhere — is
indicated by the name that.firom the first they went under,
the Philippics. In the epoch of the Verrines and the
CatiUnarians it had not been necessary to find titles for

VI.] Cicero. 65

the weapons of political warfare out of old Greek history.
Yet, in spite of this unreality, and of the decline they show
in thie highest oratorical qualities, the Philippics still remain
a noble ruin of eloquence.

Oratory at Rome had, as we have already seen, attained
a high degree of perfection when Cicero entered on public
life. Its golden age was indeed, in the estimation of
some critics, already over; old men spoke with admiring
regret of the speeches of the younger Scipio and of Gaius
Gracchus; and the death of the great pair of friendly
rivals, Crassus and Antonius, left no one at the moment
who could be called their equal. But admirable as these
great orators had been, there was still room for a higher
formal perfection, a more exhaustive and elaborate tech-
nique, without any loss of material qualities. Closer and
more careful study led the orators of the next age into
one of two opposed, or rather complementary styles, the
Attic and Asiatic; the calculated simplicity of the one
being no less artificial than the florid ornament of the
other. At an early age Cicero, with the intuition of genius,
realised that he must not attach himself to either school.
A fortunate delicacy of health led him to withdraw for two
years, at the age of seven and twenty, from the practice
at the bar, in which he was already becoming famous;
and in the schools of Athens and Rhodes he obtained
a larger view of his art, both in theory and practice, and
returned to Rome to form, not to follow, a style. Quintus
Hortensius Hortalus, the foremost representative of the
Asiatic school, was then at the height of his forensic repu-
* tation. Within a year or two Cicero was recognised as
at least his equal : it is to the honour of both, that the
eclipse of Hortensius by his younger rival brought no
jealousy or alienation; up to the death of Hortensius,
about the outbreak of the Civil war, they remained good
friends. Years afterwards Cicero inscribed with his name
the treatise, now lost, but made famous to. later ages by

66 Latin Literature. [I.

having been one of the great turning-points in the life of
St Augustine,* which he wrote in praise of philosophy as
an introduction to the series of his philosophical works.

The years which followed Cicero's return fixjm the East
were occupied, with the single break of his quaestorship in
Sicily, by hard and continuous work at the bar. His
speeches of this date, being non-political, have for the most
part not been preserved. The two still imperfectly extant,
the Pro Roscio Comoedo of 76, and the Pro TuUio of
72 B.C. , form, together with two other speeches dating from
before his visit to the East, the Pro Quinctio and Prp^
Roscio Amerino, and, with his juvenile treatise on rhetoric
known as the De Inventione, the body of prose composition
which represents the first of his four periodsi These early
speeches are carefully composed according to the scholastic
canons then in vogue, the hard legal style of the older
courts alternating with passages of carefully executed arti-
ficial ornament. Their chief interest is one of contrast
with his matured style ; for they show, no doubt with much
accuracy, what the general level of oratory was out of which
the great Ciceronian eloquence sprang.

In 70 B.C. , at the age of thirty-six, Cicero at last found
his great chance, and seized it. The impeachment of
Verres for maladministration in the government of Sicily
was a political trial of gteat constitutional importance. It
was undertaken at the direct encouragement of Pompeius,
who had entered on his first or democratic consulate, and
was indirectly a formidable attack both on the oligarchic
administration of the provinces and on the senatorian jury-
panels, in whose hands the Sullan constitution had placed
the only check upon misgovernment. The defence of
Verres was undertaken by Hortensius ; the ' selection of
Cicero -^S^chief counsel for the prosecution by the demo-
cratic leaders was a public recognition of him as the fore-
most orator on the Pompeian side. He threw himself into

• Con/ess,^ III. iv.

VI.] Cicero. 67

the trial with all his energy. After his opening speech,
and the evidence which followed, Verres threw up his
defence and went into exile. This, of course, brought the
case to an end ; but the cause turned on larger issues than
his particular guilt or innocence. The whole of the material
prepared against him was swiftly elaborated by Cicero into
five great orations, and published as a political document.
These orations, the Second Action against Verres as they
are called, were at once" the most powerful attack yet
made on the working of the SuUan constitution, and the
high-water mark of the earlier period of Cicero's eloquence.
It was not till some years later that his oratory culmi-
nated; but he never excelled these speeches in richness
and copiousness of style, in ease and lucidity of exposition,
and in poweFbf dealing with large masses of material. He
at once became an imposing political force; perhaps it
was hardly realised till later how incapable that force was
of going straight or of bearing down opposition. The series
of political and semi-political speeches of the next ten
years, down to his exile, represent for the time the history
of Rome ; and together with these we now begin the series
of his private letters. The year of his praetorship, 66 B.C.,
is marked by the two orations which are on the whole his
greatest, one public and the other private. The first, the
speech known as the Fro Lege Manilia, which should really
be described as the panegyric of Pompeius and of the
Roman people, does not show any profound appreciation
of the problems which then confronted the Republic ; but
the greatness of the Republic itself never found a more
august interpreter. The stately passage in which Italy and
the subject provinces are called on to bear witness to the
deeds of Pompeius breathes the very spirit of an imperial
race. Throughout this and the other great speeches of
the period " the Roman People " is a phrase that keeps
perpetually recurring with an effect like that of a bourdon
stop. As the eye glances down the page. Consul populi

68 Latin Literature, [I.

■. I

Romania Imperium Populi Romania Fortuna PopuR Romania
glitter out of the voluminous periods with a splendour that
hardly any other words could give.

The other great speech of this year, Cicero's defence of
Aulus Cluentius Habitus of Larinum on a charge of poison-
ing, has in its own style an equal brilliance of language.
The story it unfolds of the ugly tragedies of middle-class
life in the capital and the provincial Italian towns is famous
as one of the leading documents for the social life of Rome.
According to Quintilian, Cicero confessed afterwards that
his client was not innocent, and that the elaborate and
impressive story which he unfolds with such vivid detail
was in great part an invention ^f his own. This may be
only bar gossip ; true or false, his defence is an extraordi-
nary masterpiece of oratorical skill.

The manner in which Cicero conducted a defence when
the cause was not so grave or so desperate is well illustrated
by a speech delivered four years later, the Pro Archia. The
case here was one of contested citizenship. The defendant,
one of the Greek men of letters who lived in great numbers
at Rome, had been for years intimate with the literary
circle among the Roman aristocracy. This intimacy gained
him the privilege of being defended by the first of Roman
orators, who would hardly, in any other circumstances,
have troubled himself with so trivial a case. But the
speech Cicero delivered is one of the permanent glories
of Latin literature. The matter immediately at issue is
summarily dealt with in a few pages of cursory and rather
careless argument; then the scholar lets himself go.
Among the many praises of Hterature which great men of
fetters have delivered, there is hardly one more perfect
than this; some of the famous sentences have remained
ever since the abiding motto and blason of literature itself.
Haec studia adolescentiam aguht, senectutem oblectant^ se^
cundas res ornanty adversis perfugium ac solatium prae^efH^
deleciant domi, non impediunt forts, pemoctant nobiscum,

VI.] Cicero. 6g

peregrinaniury rusticantur ; and again, NuUam enim virtus
aliam mercedem laborum periculorumque desiderata praeter
hanc laudis et gioriae ; qua guide m detracta, iudiceSy quid est
quod in hoc tarn exiguo vitae curriculoy ettam brevi, tantis nos
in iaboHbus exerceamus? Certe^si nihil animus praesentiret
in posterunty et si quibus regionibus vitae spatium circum-
scriptum esty eisdem amnes cogitationes terminaret suas, nee
tantis se laboribusfrangerety neque tot curis vigiliisque angere-
tur, neque toties de vita ipsa dimicaret. Strange words these
to fall from a pleader's lips in the dusty atmosphere of the
praetor's court ! non fori, neque iudiciali consuetudine, says
Cicero himself, in the few words of graceful apology with
which the speech ends. But, in truth, as he well knew, he
was not speaking to the respectable gentlemen on the
benches before him. He addressed a larger audience;
posterity, and the civilised world.

The Fro Archia foreshadows already the change which
was bound to take place in Cicero's Hfe, ^nd which was
precipitated by his exile four years later. More and more
he found himself forced away from the inner circle of
politics, and turned to the larger field where he had an
undisputed supremacy, of political and ethical philosophy
clothed in the splendid prose of which he had now
obtained the full mastery. The roll of his great speeches
is indeed continued after his return from exile; but even
in the greatest, the Pro Sestio and Pro Caelio of 56, or
the In Pisonem of 55 B.C., something of the old tone is
missing ; it is as though the same voice spoke on a smaller
range of notes and with less flexibility of cadence. And
now alongside of the speeches begins the great series of
his works on oratory and philosophy, with the De Oratore
of 55, and the De Republica of 54 B.C.

The three books De Oratore are perhaps the most
ret«^ed examples of the Ciceronian style. The subject
practih cannot be said of all the subjects he deals with)
more »>^f which, over all its breadth and in all its detail^

70 Latin Literature. [I.

he was completely master; and, thus left tmhampered by
any difficulties with his material, he could give full scope
to his brilliant style and diction. The arrangement of the
work follows the strict scholastic divisions; but the form
of dialogue into which it is thrown, and which is managed
with really great skill, avoids the tediousness incident to a
systematic treatise. The principal persons of the dialogue
are the two great orators of the preceding age, Lucius
Crassus and Marcus Antonius ; this is only one sign out of
many that Cicero was more and more living in a sort of
dream of the past, that past of his own youth which was
still full of traditions of the earlier Republic.

The De Oratore was so complete a masterpiece that its
author probably did not care to weaken its effect by con-
tinuing at the time to bring out any of the supplementary
treatises on Roman oratory for which his library, and still
more his memory, had accumulated immense quantities of
material. In the treatise De Republican which was begun
in 54 B.C., though not published till three years later, he
carried the achievement of Latin prose into a larger and
less technical field — that of the philosophy of politics.
Again the* scene of the dialogue is laid in a past age; but
now he goes further back than he had done in the De
Oratore n to the circle of the younger Scipio. The work was
received, when published, with immense applause; but
its loss in the Middle Ages is hardly one of those which
are most seriously to be deplored, except in so far as the
second and fifth books may have preserved real information
on the early history of the Roman State and the develop-
ment of Roman jurisprudence. Large fragments were re-
covered early in the present century from a palimpsest,
itself incomplete, on which the work of Cicero had been
expunged to make room for the commentar>' of St. Augus-
tine on the Psalms. The famous Somnium Scipionisy - _
which (in imitation of the vision of Er in Plato's -^/^^^
He) the work ended, has been independently V^^iscum

VI.] Cicero. Ji

Though it flagrantly challenges comparison with the un-
equalled original, it has, nevertheless, especially in its opening
and closing passages, a grave dignity which is purely Roman,
and characteristically Ciceronian. Perhaps some of the
elaborate fantasies of De Quincey (himself naturally a
Ciceronian, and saturated in the rhythms and cadences of
the finest Latin prose) are the nearest parallel to this
piece in modem English. The opening words of Scipio*s
narrative. Cum in Africam venissem^ Manio Manilio consult
ad quartam legionem tribunus^ come on the ear like the
throb of a great organ; and here and there through the
piece come astonishing phrases of the same organ-music :
Ostendebat autem Karthaginem de excelso etpkno steUarum
inlustri et claro quodam loco, . . . Quis in reliquis orientis
aut obeuntis solis, ulHmis aut aquilonis ausirive partibus^
tuum nomen audiet / . . . Deutn te igitur scito esse, siquidem
deus est, qui viget, qui sentit, qui meminit, qui providet —
hardly from the lips of Virgil himself does the noble Latin
speech issue with a purer or a more majestic flow.

During the next few years the literary activity of Cicero
sufiered a check. The course of politics at Rome filled
him with profound disappointment and disgust. Public
issues, it became more and more plain, waited for their
determination, not on the senate-house or the forum, but
on the sword. The shameful collapse of his defence of
Milo in 52 B.C. must have stung a vanity even as well-
hardened as Cicero's to the quick; and his only important
abstract work of this period, the De Legibus, seems to have
been undertaken with little heart a A carried out without
either research or enthusiasm. His proconsulate in Cilicia
in 51 and 50 B.C. was occupied with the tedious details of
administration and petty warfare ; six months after his
return the Civil war broke out, and, until permitted to
return to Rome by Caesar in the autumn of 47 B.C., he was
practically an exile, away from his beloved Rome and his
more beloved library, hating and despising the ignorant

J2 Latin Literature, [!•

incompetence of his colleagaes, and looking forward with
almost equal terror to the conclusive triumph of his own
or the opposite party. When at last he returned, his mind
was still agitated and unsettled. The Pompeian party held
Africa and Spain with large armies; their open threats
that all who had come to terms with Caesar would be
proscribed as public enemies were not calculated to restore
Cicero's confidence. The decisive battle of Thapsus put
an end to this uncertainty; and meanwhile Cicero had
resumed work on his De Legibus^ and had once more
returned to the study of oratory in one of the most in-
teresting of his writings, the Brutus de clans Oratoribus^ in
which he gives a vivid and masterly sketch of the history
of Roman oratory down to his own time, filled with histori-
cal matter and admirable sketches of character.

The spring of 45 B.C. brought with it two events of
momentous importance to Cicero : the final collapse of the
armed opposition to Caesar at the battle of Munda, and
the loss, by the death of his daughter TuUia, of the one
deep affection of his inner life. Henceforth it seemed as
if politics had ceased to exist, even had he the heart to
interest himself in them. He fell back more completely
than ever upon philosophy; and the year that followed
(45-44 B.C.) is, in mere quantity of literary production, as
well as in the abiding effect on the world of letters of the
work he then produced, the annus mirabilis of his life.
Two at least of the works of this year, the De Gloria and
the De Virtutibus^ have perished, though the former survived
long enough to be read by Petrarch; but there remain
extant (besides one or two other pieces of slighter im*
portance) the De Finibus, the Academics, the Tusculans,
the De Natura Deorum, the De Divinatiotie, the De Fato,
the De OfficiiSy and the two exquisite essays De Senectute
and De Amicitia.

It is the work of this astonishing year which, on the
whole, represents Cicero's permanent contribution to letters

VI.] Cicero, 73

and to human thought. If his philosophy seems now to
have exhausted its influence, it is because it has in great
measure been absorbed into the fabric of civilised society.
Ciceronianism, at the period of the Renaissance, and even
in the eighteenth century, meant more than the impulse
towards florid and sumptuous style. It meant all that is
conveyed by the Latin word humanitas ; the title of " the
humaner letters," by which Latin was long designated in
European universities, indicated that in the great Latin
writers — in Cicero and Virgil pre-eminently — a higher type
of human life was to be found than existed in the literature
of other countries : as though at Rome, and in the first
century before Christ, the political and social environment
had for the first time produced men such as men would
wish to be, at all events for the ideals of Western Europe.
To less informed or less critical ages than our own, the
absolute contribution of Cicero to ethics and metaphysics
seemed comparable to that of the great Greek thinkers ;
the De Natura Deorum was taken as a workable argument
against atheism, and the thin and wire-drawn discussions of
the Academics were studied with an attention hardly given
to the founder of the Academy. When a sounder historical
method brought these writings into their real proportion,
it was inevitable that the scale should swing violently to
the other side ; and for a time no language was too strong
in which to attack the reputation of the " phrase-maker,"
the "journalist," whose name had once dominated Europe.
The violence of this attack has now exhausted itself; and
we may be content, without any exaggerated praise or
blame, to note the actual historical effect of these writings
through many ages, and the actual impression made on
the world by the type of character which they embodied
and, in a sense, created. In this view, Cicero represents
a force that no historian can neglect, and the importance
of which it is not easy to over-estimate. He did for the
Empire and the Middle Ages what Lucretius, with his

74 Latin LUeratMnt,

Caj greater phSosofribx: gemofi, totaDj fdled to do — creatied
iQtm% of thought in viiSch the life of philosophy grew, and
a body of expression whidi alone made its growth in the
Latin-^peaJdng worid possible; and to that wodd he pre-
fented a political ideal which profonndl j inflncnced the
whole course of European history even up to the French
Eevohttion. Without Cicero, the Middle Ages would not
have had Augustine or Aquinas; but, without him, the
movement which annulled the Middle Ages would have
had neither Miribeau nor Htt.

The part of Cicero's work which die present age
probably finds the most interesting, and the interest of
which is, in the nature of things, perennial, has been as yet
left unmentioned. It consists of the collections of his
private letters from the year tZ b.c. to within a few months
of his death. The first of these contains his letters to the
intimate friend and adviser, Titus Pomponius Atticus, with
whom, when they were not both in Rome, he kept up
a constant and an extremely intimate correspondence.
Atticus, whose profession, as &r as he had one, was that
of a banker, was not only a man of wide knowledge and
great political sagacity, but a refined critic and an author
of considerable merit. The publishing business, which he
conducted as an adjunct to his principal profession, made
him of great use to Cicero by the rapid multiplication in
his workshops of copies of the speeches or other writings
for which there was an immediate public demand. But
the intimacy was much more than that of the politician
and his confidential adviser, or the author and his publisher.
Cicero found in him a friend with whom he could on all
occasions be perfectly frank and at his ease, and on whose
sober judgment and undemonstrative, but perfectly sincere,
attachment his own excitable and emotional nature^^uld
always throw itself without reserve. About four hundred
of the letters were published by Atticus several years after
Cicero's death. It must always be a source of regret that

VI.] Cicero. 75

he could not, or, at all events, did not, publish the other
half of the correspondence ; many of the letters, especially
the brief confidential notes, have the tantalising interest of
a conversation where one of the speakers is inaudible.
It is the letters to Atticus that place Cicero at the head of
all epistolary stylists. We should hardly guess from the
more formal and finished writings what the real man was,
with his excitable Italian temperament, his swift power of
phrase, his sensitive affections.

The other large collection of Cicero's letters, the
Epistolae ad FamiliareSy was preserved and edited by his
secretary. Tiro. They are, of course, of very unequal
value and interest. Some are merely formal documents;
others, like those to his wife and family in book xiv., are
as intimate and as valuable as any we possess. The two
smaller collections, the letters to his brother Quintus, and
those to Marcus Brutus, of which a mere fragment is
extant, are of little independent value. The Epistolae
ad Familiares include, besides Cicero's own letters, a
^ large number of letters addressed to him by various
correspondents ; a whole book, and that not the least
interesting, consists of those sent to him during his Cilician
proconsulate by the brilliant and erratic young aristocrat,
Marcus Caelius Rufus, who was the next successor of
Catullus as the favoured lover of Clodia Quadrantaria.
Full of the political and social gossip of the day, they are
written in a curiously slipshod but energetic Latin, which
brings before us even more vividly than Cicero's own the
famihar language of the upper classes at Rome at the time.
Another letter, which can hardly be passed* over in silence
in any history of Latin literature, is the noble message of
condolence to Cicero on the death of his beloved Tullia,
by the statesman and jurist, Servius Sulpicius Rufus, who
carried on in this age the great tradition of the Scaevolae.

It is due to these priceless collections of letters, more
than to any other single thing, that our knowledge of the

J6 La/in Literature. [I.

Ciceronian age is so complete and so intimate. At eveiy
point they reinforce and vitalise the more elaborate literary
productions of the period. The art of letter-writing sud-
denly rose in Cicero's hands to its full perfection. It fell
to the lot of no later Roman to have at once such mastery
over familiar style, and contemporary events of such
engrossing and ever-changing interest on which to exercise
it. All the great letter-writers of more modem ages have
more or less, consciously or unconsciously, followed the
Ciceronian model England of the eighteenth century
was peculiarly rich in them ; but Horace Walpole, Cowper,
Gray himself, would willingly have acknowledged Cicero
as their master.

Caesar's assassination on the 15th of March, 44 B.a,
plunged the political situation into a worse chaos than had
ever been reached during the civil wars. For several
months it was not at all plain how things were tending,
or what fresh combinations were to rise out of the welter
in which a vacillating and incapable senate formed the
only constitutional rallying-point. In spite of all his long-
cherished delusions, Cicero must have known that this way
no hope lay ; when at last he flung himself into the conflict,
and broke away from his literary seclusion to make the
fierce series of attacks upon Antonius which fill the winter
of 44-43 B.C., he may have had some vague hopes from
the Asiatic legions which once before, in Sulla's hands, had
checked the revolution, and some from the power of his
own once unequiQled eloquence; but on the whole he
seems to have undertaken the contest chiefly from the
instinct that had become a tradition, and from his deep
personal repugnance to Antonius. Tlie fourteen Philippics
add little to his reputation as an orator, and still less to his
credit as a statesman. The old watchwords are there,
but their unreality is now more obvious ; the old rhetorical
skill, but more coarsely and less effectively used. The last
Philippic was delivered to advocate a public thanksgiving

VI.] Cicero. J J

for the victory gained over Antonius by the consuls, Hirtius
and Pansa. A month later, the consuls were both dead,
and their two armies had passed into the control of the
young Octavianus. In autumn the triumvirate was consti-
tuted, with an armed force of forty legions behind it. The
proscription Usts were issued in November. On the 7th
of December, after some aimless wandering that hardly
was a serious effort to escape, Cicero was overtaken near
Formiae by a small party of Antonian troops. He was
killed, and his head sent to Rome and displayed in the
senate-house. There was nothing left for which he could
have wished to live. In the five centuries of the Republic
there never had been a darker time for Rome. Cicero
had outlived almost all the great men of his age. The
newer generation, so far as they had revealed themselves,
were of a t)rpe from which those who had inherited the
great traditions of the Republic shrank with horror.
Caesar Octavianus, the future master of the world, was a
delicate boy of twenty, already an object of dislike and dis-
trust to nearly all his allies. Virgil, a poet still voiceless^
was twenty-seven.

vir

FROSE OF THE aCERONIAN AGE : CAESAR AND SALLUST.

Fertile as the Ciceronian age was in authorship of many
kinds, there was only one person in it whose claim to be
placed in an equal rank with Cicero could ever be seriously
entertained ; and this was, strangely enough, one who was
as it were only a man of letters by accident, and whose
literary work is but among the least of his titles to fame —
Julius Caesar himself. That -mything written by that
remarkable man must be interesting and valuable in a high
degree is obvious ; but the combination of literary power
of the very first order with his unparalleled military and
political genius is perhaps unique in history.

It is one of the most regrettable losses in Latin literature
that Caesar's speeches and letters have almost completely
perished. Of the latter several collections were made after
his death, and were extant in the second century ; but none
are now preserved, except a few brief notes to Cicero, of
which copies were sent by him at the time to Atticus. The
fragments of his speeches are even less considerable ; yet,
according to the unanimous testimony both of contemporary
and of later critics, they were unexcelled in that age of great
oratory. He used the Latin language with a purity and
distinction that no one else could equal. And along with
this quality, the mira eUgantia of Quintilian, his oratory
had some kind of severe magnificence which we can partly

VII.] Caesar. 79

guess at from his extant writings — magnifica et generosa,
says Cicero ; facultas dicendi imperatoria is the phrase of
a later and able critic.

Of Caesar's other lost writings little need be said. In
youth, like most of his contemporaries, he wrote poems,
including a tragedy, of which Tacitus drily observes that
they were not better than those of Cicero. A grammatical
treatise, De Analogia, was composed by him during one
of his long journeys between Northern Italy and the
head-quarters of his army in Gaul during his proconsulate.
A work on astronomy, apparently written in connection
with his reform of the calendar, two pamphlets attacking
Cato, and a collection of apophthegms, have also dis-
appeared. But we possess what were by far the most
important of his writings, his famous memoirs of the Gallic
and Civil Wars.

The seven books of Commentaries on the Gallic War
were written in Caesar's winter-quarters in Gaul, after the
capture of Alesia and the final suppression of the Arvemian
revolt. They were primarily intended to serve an immediate
political purpose, and are indeed a defence, framed with
the most consummate skill, of the author's whole Gallic
policy and of his constitutional position. That Caesar was
able to do this without, so far as can be judged, violating, or
even to any large degree suppressing facts, does equal
credit to the clearsightedness of his policy and to his
extraordinary literary power. From first to last there is not
a word either of self-laudation or of innuendo ; yet at the
end we find that, by the use of the simplest and most
lucid narration, in which hardly a fact or a detail can be
controverted, Caesar has cleared his motives and justified
his conduct with a success the more complete because his
tone is so temperate and seemingly so impartial. An officer
of his staff who was with him during that winter, and who
afterwards added an eighth book to the Commentaries
to complete the history of the Gallic proconsulate^ ha&

So Latin Literature, p.

recorded the ease and swiftness with which the work
was written. Caesar issued it under the unpretending
name of Commentarii — " notes " — on the events of his
campaigns, which might be useful as materials for history ;
but there was no exaggeration in the splendid compUment
paid it a few years later by Cicero, that no one in his senses
would think of recasting a work whose succinct, perspicuous,
and brilliant style — pura et inlustris brevitas — has been the
model and the despair of later historians.

The three books of Commentaries on the Civil War show
the same merits in a much less marked degree. They were
not published in Caesar's lifetime, and do not seem to
have received from him any close or careful revision. The
literary incompetence of the Caesarian officers into whose
hands they fell after his death, and one or more of whom
must be responsible for their publication, is sufficiently
evident from their own awkward attempts at continuing
them in narratives of the Alexandrine, African, and Spanish
campaigns; and whether from the carelessness of the
original editors or from Other reasons, the text is in a most
deplorable condition. Yet this is not in itself sufficient
to account for many positive misstatements. Either the
editors used a very free hand in altering the rough manu-
script, or — which is not in itself unlikely, and is borne out
by other facts — Caesar's own prodigious memory and
incomparable perspicuity became impaired in those five
years of all but superhuman achievement, when, with the
whole weight of the civilised world on his shoulders, feebly
served by second-rate lieutenants and hampered at every
turn by the open or passive opposition of nearly the whole
of the trained governing classes, he conquered four great
Roman armies, secured Egypt and Upper Asia and an-
nexed Numidia to the Republic, carried out the unifica-
tion of Italy, re-established public order and public credit,
and left at his death the foundations of the Empire securely
laid for his successor*

VII.] Caesar's Officers, 8i

The loyal and capable officer, Aulus Hirtius (who after-
wards became consul, and was killed in battle before
Mutina a year after Caesar's murder), did his best to
supplement his master's narrative. He seems to have been
a well-educated man, but without any particular literary
capacity. It was uncertain, even to the careful research of
Suetonius, whether the narrative of the campaigns in Egypt
and Pontus, known as the Bellum Alexandrinum^ was written
by him or by another officer of Caesar's, Gains Oppius.
The books on the campaigns of Africa and Spain which
follow are by different hands : the former evidently by
some subaltern officer who took part in the war, and very
interesting as showing the average level of intelligence and
culture among Roman officers of the period ; the latter by
another author and in very inferior Latin, full of grammatical
solecisms and popular idioms oddly mixed up with epic
phrases from Ennius, who was still, it must be remembered,
the great Latin school-book. It is these curious fragments
of history which more than anything else help us to under-
stand the rapid decay of Latin prose after the golden
period. Under the later Republic the educated class and
the governing class had, broadly speaking, been the same.
The Civil wars, in effect, took administration away from
their hands, transferring it to the new official class, of which
these subalterns of Caesar's represent the type; and this
change was confirmed by the Empire. The result was a
sudden and long-continued divorce between political activity
on one hand and the profession of letters on the other.
For a century after the establishment of the Empire the
aristocracy, which had produced the great literature of the
Republic, remained forcibly or sullenly silent ; and the new
hierarchy was still at the best only half educated. The
professional man of letters was at first fostered and sub-
sidised; but even before the death of Augustus State
patronage of literature had fallen into abeyance, while the
cultured classes fell more and more back on the use of

82 Latin Literature, p.

Greek. The varying fortunes of this struggle between
Greek and literary Latin as it had been formed under the
Republic, belong to a later period: at present we must
return to complete a general survey of the prose of the
Ciceronian age.

Historical writing at Rome, as we have seen, had hitherto
been in the form either of annals or memoirs. The latter
were, of course, rather materials for history than history
itself, even when they were not excluded from Quintilian's
famous definition of history * by being composed primarily
as political pamphlets. The former had so far been
attempted on too large a scale, and with insufficient equip-
ment either of research or style, to attain any permanent
merit. In the ten years after Caesar's death Latin history
was raised to a higher level by the works of Sallust, the first
scientific historian whom Italy had produced.

Gains Sallustius Crispus of Amiternum in Central Italy
belonged to that younger generation of which Marcus
Antonius and Marcus Caelius Rufiis were eminent examples.
Clever and dissipated, they revolted alike from the severe
traditions and the narrow class prejudices of the con-
stitutional party, and Caesar found in them enthusiastic, if
somewhat imprudent and untrustworthy, supporters. Sal-
lust was expelled from the senate just before the outbreak
of the Civil war ; was reinstated by Caesar, and entrusted
with high posts in lUyria and Italy; and was afterwards
sent by him to administer Africa with the rank of proconsul.
There he accumulated a large fortune, and, after Caesar's
death, retired to private life in his beautiful gardens on the
Quirinal, and devoted himself to historical study. The
largest and most important of his works, the five books of
Htstoriaey covering a period of about ten years from the
death of Sulla, is only extant in inconsiderable fragments ;
but his twofmonographs\on the Jugurthine war and the

* Historia scribitur ad narrandum non ad probandum : Inst. Or.,
X. i. 31.

VII.] SallusL 83

Catilinarian conspiracy, which have been preserved, place
him beyond doubt in the first rank of Roman historians.

Sallust took Thucydides as his principal literary model.
His reputation has no doubt suffered by the comparison
which this choice makes inevitable; and though Quintilian
did not hesitate to claim for him a substantial equality with
the great Athenian, no one would now press the parallel,
except in so far as Sallust's formal treatment of his
subject affords interesting likenesses or contrasts with
the Thucydidean manner. \ In his prefatory remarks, his
elaborately conceived and executed speeches,! his reflec-
tions on character, and'^/his terse method of narration,
Sallust closely follows the manner of his master. He
even copies his faults in a sort of dryness of style and
an excessive use of antithe^. But we cannot feel, in
reading the Catilhie or the Jugurthay that it is the work
of a writer of the very first intellectual power. Yet
the two historians have this in common, v^hich is not bor-
rowed by the later from the earlier, — that they approach
and handle their subject with the mature mind, the insight
and common sense of the grown man, where their prede-
cessors had been- comparativefy like children. Both are
totally free from superstition; neither allows his own
political views to obscure his vision of facts, of men as they
were and events as they happened. The respect for truth,
which is the first virtue of the historian, is stronger in
Sallust than in any of his more brilliant successors. His
ideal in the matter of research and documentary evidence
was, for that age, singularly high. In the Catiline he writes
very largely from direct personal knowledge of men and
events ; but the Jugu rtha, which deals with a time two gen-
erations earlier than the date of its composition, involved
wide inquiry and much preparation. He had translations
made from original documents in the Carthaginian language ;
and a complete synopsis of Roman history, for reference
during the progress of his work, was compiled for him by

$4 Latin Literature, * [I.

a Greek secretary. Such pains were seldom taken by a
Latin historian.

The last of the Ciceronians, Sallust is also in a sense the
first of the imperial prose-writers. His style, compressed,
rhetorical, and very highly polished, is in strong contrast
to the graceful and fluid periods which were then, and for
some time later continued to be, the predominant fashion,
and foreshadows the manner of Seneca or Tacitus. His
archaism in the use of pure Latin, and, alongside of it, his
free adoption of Grecisms, are the first open sign of two
movements which profoundly affected the prose of the
earlier and later empire. The acrid critic of the Augustan
age, Asinius Pollio, accused him of having had collections
of obsolete words and phrases made for his use out of "Cato
and the older Roman writers. For a short time he was
eclipsed by the brilliant and opulent style of Livy; but
Livy formed no school, and Sallust on the whole remained
in the first place. The ^ line of Martial, primus Romana
Crispus in historia, expresses the settled opinion held of
him down to the final decay of letters ; and even in the
Middle Ages he remained widely read and highly esteemed.
^^ Contemporary with Sallust in this period of transition
between the Ciceronian and the Augustan age is Cornelius
Nepos {circ, 99-24 B.C.). In earlier life he was one of the
circle of Catullus, and after Cicero's death was one of the
chief fHends of Atticus, of whom a brief biography, which
he wrote after Atticus' death, is still extant. Unlike Sallust,
Nepos never took part in public affairs,' but carried on
throughout a long life the part of a man of letters, honest
and kindly, but without any striking originality or ability.
In him we are on the outer fringe of pure literature ; and
it is no doubt purposely that Quintilian wholly omits him
from the list of Roman historians. Of his numerous writ-
ings on history, chronology, and grammar, we only possess a
fragment of one, his collection of Roman and foreign biogra-
phies^ entitled De Viris lUustribus, Of this work there

VIL] • Nepos a?id Varro. 85

is extant one complete section, De Excellentibus Ducibus
Exterarum Gentium^ and two lives from another section,
those of Atticus and the younger Cato. The accident of
their convenient length and the simplicity of their language
has made them for generations a common school-book for
beginners in Latin ; were it not for this, there can be little
doubt that Nepos, like the later epitomators, Eutropius or
Aurelius Victor, would be hardly known except to pro-
fessional scholars, and perhaps only to be read in the pages
of some Corpus Scriptorum Romanorum, The style of
these little biographies is unpretentious, and the language
fairly pure, though without any great command of phrase.
A theory was once held that what we possess is merely a
later epitome from the lost original. But for this there is
no rational support. The language and treatment, such as
they are (and they do not sink to the level of the histories
of the African and Spanish wars), are of this, and not of a
later age, and quite consonant with the good-natured con-
tempt which ^epos met at the hands of later Roman critics.
The chief interestof the work is perhaps the clearness with
which it enforces the tjruth we are too apt to forget, that
the great writers were in their own age, as now, unique,
and that there is no such thing as a widely diffused level
of high literary excellence.

As remote from literature in the higher sense were the
innumerable writings of the Ciceronian age on science, art,
antiquities, grammar, rhetoric, and a hunared miscellaneous
subjects, which are, for the most part, known only from
notices in the writings of later commentators and encyclo-
pedists. Foremost among the voluminous authors of this
class was the celebrated antiquarian, Marcus Terentius
Varro, whose long and laborious Hfe, reaching from two
years after the death of the elder Cato till the final estab-
lishment of the Empire, covers and overlaps the entire
Ciceronian age. Of the six or seven hundred volumes which
issued from his pen, and which formed an inexhaustible

86 Latin Literature. [L

qtxairy for his sucoessais, nearly all are lost The most
important of them were the one hxmdred and fifty books
of Saiurae Mtniffeae, miscellanies in prose and verse
in the manner which had been originated by Menippns of
Gadan, Ijbe master of the celebrated Melcager, and which
had at once obtained an enormous popularity throughout the
whole of the Greek-speaking world ; the forty-one books of
Antiquitates Rtrum Huwuinarum etDivinarum^ the standard
work on the religious and secular antiquities of Rome down
to the time c^ Augustine ; the fifteen books of Imutgines,
iHographical sketches, with portraits, of celebrated Greeks
and Romans, the first certain instance in h istory <^ the
publication of an illustrated book; the twenty-five books
Df Lingua LaOna, of which six are extant in an im-
perfect condition ; and the treatise Lk Re RusUca^ which
we possess in an almost complete state. This last work
was written at the age of eighty. It is in die form of a
dialogue, and is not without descriptive and dramatic power.
The tedkmsness which characterised all Varro's writing is
less felt where the snliject is one of which he had a thorough
practical knowledge, and which gave ample scope for the
vein of roug^ but not ungenial humour which he inherited
horn Cato.

Other names of this epoch have left no permanent mark
on literature. The precursors of Sallust in history seem,
like the precursors of Cicero in philosophy, to have
approached their task with litde more equipment than that
of the ordinary amateur. The great orator Hortensius
wrote Annals (probably in the form of memoirs of his own
time), which are only known from a reference to them in
a later history written in the reign of Tiberius. Atticus,
who had an interest in Uterature beyond that of the mere
publisher, drew up a sort of handbook of Roman history,
which is repeatedly mentioned by Cicero. Cicero's own
brother Quintus, who passed for a man of letters, com-
posed a work of the same kind ; the tragedies with which

.a^tJai— I fc I • ma,- . .:s_i«.. ^.

VIL] Pudlilius Syrus. 87

he relieved the tedium of winter-quarters in Gaul were,
however, translations from the Greek, not originals. Cicero's
private secretary, Marcus TuUius Tiro, best known by the
system of shorthand which he invented or improved, and
which for long remained the basis of a standard code, is
also mentioned as the author of works on grammar, and;
as has already been noticed, edited a collection of his
master's letters after his death. Decimus Laberius, a
Roman of equestrian family, and Publilius Syrus, a natural-
ised native of Antioch, wrote mhne^ which were performed
with great applause, and gave a fugitive literary importance
to this trivial form of dramatic entertainment. A collec-
tion of sentences which passes under the name of the
latter was formed out of his works under the Empire, and
enlarged from other sources in the Middle Ages. It
supplies many admirable instances of the terse vigour of
the Roman popular philosophy; some of these lines, like
the famous —

Bene vixit is qui poiuit cum voluitmori^

or —

Judex damnatur ubi nocens absoivifur,

or —

O vitam misero longatn^ felici brevem!

or the perpetually misquoted —

Stultum facit foriunay quern vult perdere^

have sunk deeper and been more widely known than almost
anything else written in Latin. Among the few poets who
succeeded the circle of Catullus, the only one of interest is
Publius Terentius Varro, known as Varro Atacinus from
his birthplace on the banks of the Aude in Provence, the
first of the long list of Transalpine writers who filled Rome
at a later period. Besides the usual translations and
adaptations from Alexandrian originals^ and an elabprato

Latin Literature. [I.

cosnu^raphy, he practised his considerable talent in hexa-
meter verse bodi in epic and satiric poetry, and did some-
thing to dear the way in metrical techniqae for botii Horace
and VirgiL With diese names, among a crowd of others
even more vagne and ^ladowy, the literature of the Roman
Republic doses. A new genCTation was akeady at the

II.

THE AUGUSTAN AGE.

■WT

■^

■li

VIRGIL.

PuBuus Vergiuus Maro was bom at the village of Andes,
near Mantua, on the 15 th of October, 70 B.C. The
province of Cisalpine Gaul, though not formally incorpo-
rated with Italy till twenty years later, had before this
become thoroughly Romanised, and was one of the princi-
pal recruiting grounds for the legions. But the population
was still, by blood and sympathy, very largely Celtic ; and
modem theorists are fond of tracing the new element of
romance, which Virgil introduced with such momentous
results into Latin poetry, to the same Celtic spirit which
in later ages flowered out in the Arthurian legend, and
inspired the whole creative literature of mediaeval Europe.
To the countrymen of Shakespeare and Keats it will not
seem necessary to assume a Celtic origin, on abstract
grounds, for any new birth of this romantic element. The
name Maro may or may not be Celtic; any argument
founded on it is of little more relevance than the fancy
which once interpreted the name of Virgil's mother, Magia
Folia, into a supernatural significance, and, connecting the
name Virgilius itself with the word Virgo, metamorphosed
the poet into an enchanter bom of a maiden mother, the
Merlin of the Roman Empire.

Virgil's father was a small freeholder in Andes, who
farmed his own land, practised forestry and bee-keeping,

92 Latin Literature. [II.

and gradually accumulated a sufficient competence to
enaUe him to give his son — an only child, so &r as can be
ascertained — the best education that the times could pro-
Tide. He was sent to school at the neighbouring town of
Cremona, and afterwards to Milan, the capital dty of the
pnmnce. At the age of seventeen he proceeded to Rome,
where he studied oratory and philosophy under the best
masters of the time. A tradition, which the dates make
improbable, was that Gains Cktavius, afterwards the Em-
peror Augustus, was for a time his feUow-scholar under
the rhetorician Epidius. In the class-room of the Epicu-
rean Siro he may have made his first acquaintance with the
poetry of Lucretius.

For the next ten years we know nothing of Viigil*s life,
which no doubt was diat of a profound student. His
Either had died, and his mother married again, and his
patrimony was sufficient to support him until a turn of
the wheel of public affiurs for a moment lost, and then
permanendy secured his fortune. After die batde of
I^iilippi, the first task of the victorious triumvirs was to
provide for the disbanding and setdement of the immense
armies which had been raised for the Civil war. The
lands of cities which had taken the Republican side were
confiscate right and left for this purpose; among the
rest, Virgirs ^irm, which was included in the teiritory
of Cremona. But Viigil found in the administrator of the
district. Gains Asinius PoUio, himself a distinguished critic
and man of letteis, a poweHul and active patron. By his
influence and that of his fiiends, Cornelius Gallus and
Alfenus Varus — the former a soldier and poet, the latter an
eminent jurist, who both had been feDow-students of Viigil
at Rome — Virgil ^i^s^comjpensated by an estate in Campania,
and introduced to the intimate circle of Octavian^ who,
under the terms of the triumvirate, was already absolute
ruler of Italy.

It was about this time that the EcJogues were published.

I.] Virgil. 93

whether separately or collectively is uncertain, though the
final collection and arrangement, which is Virgil's own,
can hardly be later than 38 B.C. The impression they
made on the world of letters was immediate and universal.
To some degree no doubt a reception was secured to them
by the influence of Maecenas, the Home Minister of
Octavianus, who had already taken up the line which he so
largely developed in later years, of a public patron of art
and letters in the interest of the new government. But had
Virgil made his first public appearance merely as a Court
poet, it is probable that XhQ Eclogues would have roused
little enthusiasm and little serious criticism. Their true
significance seems to have been at once realised as marking
the beginning of a new era ; and amid the storm of criticism,
laudatory and adverse, which has raged round them for so
many ages since, this cardinal fact has always remained
prominent. Alike to the humanists or the earlier Renais-
sance, who found in them the sunrise of a golden age of
poetry and the achievement of the Latin conquest over
Greece, and to the more recent critics of this century, for
whom they represeqted the echo of an already exhausted
convention and the beginning of the decadence of Roman
poetry, the Eclogues have been the real turning-point, not
only between two periods of Latin literature, but between
two worlds.

The poems destined to so remarkable a significance are,
in their external form, close and careful imitations of
Theocritus, and have all the vices and weaknesses of imitative
poetry to a degree that could not well be exceeded. Nor
are these failings redeemed (as is to a certain extent true of
the purely imitative work of Catullus and other poets) by
any brilliant jewel-finish of workmanship. The execution
is uncertain, hesitating, sometimes extraordinarily feeble.
One well-known line it is impossible to explain otherwise
than as a mistranslation of a phrase in Theocritus such as
one would hardly expect from an average schoolboy. When

94 Latin Literature, [II.

Virgil follows the convention of the Greek pastoral hisixopy
is doubly removed from nature ; where he ventures on fresh
impersonation or allegory of his own, it is generally weak in
itself and always hopelessly out of tone with the rest.
Even the versification is curiously unequal and imperfect
•There are lines in more than one Eclogue which remind
one in everything but their languor of the flattest parts of
Lucretius. Contemporary critics even went so far as to
say that the language here and there was simply not
Latin.

Yet granted that all this and more than all this is true^^
it does not touch that specific Virgilian charm of which
these poems first disclosed the secret. Already through
their immature and tremulous cadences there pierces, from
time to time, that note of brooding pity which is unique
in the poetry of the world. The^urth and tenth Eclogues
may be singled out especially as showing the new method,
which almost amounted to a new human language, as~they
are also those where Virgil breaks away most decidedly
from imitation of the Greek idyllists. The fourth Eclogue
unfortunately has been so long and so deeply associated
with purely adventitious ideas that it requires a consider-
able effort to read it as it ought to be read. The curious
misconception which turned it into a prophecy of the
birth of Christ outlasted in its effects any serioua^belief in
its historical truth : even modem critics cite Isaiah for
parallels, and are apt to decry it as a childish attempt
to draw a picture of some actual golden age. But the
Sibylline verses which suggested its contents and imagery
were really but the accidental grain of dust round which
the crystallisation of the poem began ; and the enchanted
light which lingers over it is hardly distinguishable from
that which saturates the Georgics, Cedet et ipse mart vector^
nee nautica pinus mutabit merces — the feeling here is the
same as in his mere descriptions of daily weather, like
the Omnia plenis rura natantfossis atque otnnis navitaponto

'i m

I.] Virgil. 95

umida vela legit; not so much a vision of a golden age as
Nature herself seen through a medium of strange gold.
Or again, in the tenth Eclogue, where the masque of shep-
herds and gods passes before the sick lover, it is through
the same strange and golden air that they seem to move,
and the heavy lilies of Silvanus droop in the stillness of the
same unearthly day.

Seven years following on the publication of the Eclogues
were spent by Virgil on the composition of the Georgics,
They were published two years after the battle of Actium,
being thus the first, as they are the most splendid, literary
production of the Empire. They represent the art of Virgil
in its matured perfection. The subject was one in which he
was thoroughly at home and completely happy. His own
early years had been spent in the pastures of the Mincio,
among his father's cornfields and coppices and hives ; and
his newer residence, by the seashore near Naples in winter,
and in summer at his villa in the lovely hill-country of
Campania, surrounded him with all that was most beautiful
in the most beautiful of lands. His delicate health made
it easier for him to give his work the slow and arduous
elaboration that makes the Georgics in mere technical
finish the most perfect work of Latin, or perhaps of any
literature. There is no trace of impatience in the work.
It was in some sense a commission; but Augustus and
Maecenas, if it be true that they suggested the subject, had,
at all events, the sense not to hurry it. The result more
than fiilfilled the brilliant promise of the Eclogues, Virgil
was now, without doubt or dispute, the first of contempo-
rary poets.

But his responsibilities grew with his greatness. The
scheme of a great Roman epic, which had always floated
before his own mind, was now definitely and indeed
urgently pressed upon him by authority which it was
difficult to resist. And many elements in his own mind
drew him in the same direction. Too much stress need

96 Latin Literature, [II.

not be laid on the passage in the sixth Eclogue — one of
the rare autobiographic touches is his work — in which he
alludes to his early experiments in " singing of kings and
battles." Such early exercises are the common field of
young poets. But the maturing of his mind, which can
be traced in the Georgics, was urging him towards certain
methods of art for which the epic was the only literary
form that gave sufficient scope. More and more he waa
turning from nature to man and human life, and to the
contemplation of human destiny. The _growth of the
psychological instinct in the Georgics is curiously visible
in the episode of Aristaeus, with which the poem now
ends. According to a well-authenticated tradition, the
last two hundred and fifty Unes of the fourth Georgic were
written several years after the rest of the poem, to replace
the original conclusion, which had contained the praises
of his early friend, Cornelius Gallus, now dead in disgrace
and proscribed from court poetry. In the story of Orpheus
and Eurydice, in the later version, Virgil shows a new
method and a new power. It stands between the idyl and
the epic, but it is the epic method towards which it tends.
No return upon the earlier manner was thenceforth pt)s-
sible j with many searchings of heart, with much occasional
despondency and dissatisfaction, he addressed himself to
the composition of the Aeneid,

The earlier national epics of Naevius and Ennius had
framed certain lines for Roman epic poetry, which it was
almost bound to follow. They had established the mythical
connection of Rome with Troy and with the great cycle
of Greek legend, and had originated the idea of making
Rome itself — that Fortuna Urbis which later stood in the
form of a golden statue in the imperial bedchamber — the
central interest, one might almost say the central figure,
of the story. To adapt the Homeric methods to this new
purpose, and at the same time to make his epic the vehicle
for all his own inward broodings over life and fate, for

^ ] Virgil. 97

his subtle and delicate psychology, and for that philosophic
passion in which all the other motives and springs of life
were becoming included, was a task incapable of perfect
solution. On his death-bed Virgil made it his last desire
that the Aeneid should be destroyed, nominally on the
ground that it still wanted three years' work to bring it
to perfection, but one can hardly doubt from a deeper
and less articulate feeling. The command of the Emperor
alone prevented his wish from taking effect. With the
unfinished Aeneidy as with the unfinished poem of Lucretius,
it is easy to see within what limits any changes or im-
provements would have been made in it had the author
lived longer: the work is, in both cases, substantially
done.

The Aeneid was begun the year after the publication
of the GeorgicSy when Virgil was forty years of age. During
its progress he continued to live for the most part in his
Campanian retirement. He had a house at Rome in the
fashionable quarter of the Esquiline, but used it little.
He was also much in Sicily, and the later books of the
Aetyid seem to show personal observation of many parts
of Central Italy. It is a debated question whether he
visited "Greece more than once. His last visit there was
in 19 B.C. He had resolved to spend three years more
on the completion of his poem, and then give himself up
to philosophy for what might remain of his life. But the
three years were not given him. A fever, caught while
visiting Megara on a day of excessive heat, induced him
to return hastily to Italy. He died a few days after landing
at Brundusium, on the 26th of -September. His ashes
were, by his own request, buried near Naples, where his
tomb was a century afterwards worshipped as a holy place.

The Aeneidy carefully edited from the poet's manuscript
by two of his friends, was forthwith published, and had
such a reception as perhaps no poem before or since has
ever found. Already, while it was in progress, it had been

gS Latin Literature, [II.

•

rumoured as " something greater than the Iliad^^ and now
that it appeared, it at once became the canon of Roman
poetry, and immediately began to exercise an unparalleled
influence over Latin literature, prose as well as verse.
Critics were not indeed wanting to point out its defects,
and there was still a school (which attained greater im-
portance a century later) that went back to Lucretius
and the older poets, and refused to allow VirgiFs pre-
eminence. But for the Roman world at large, as since
for the world of the Latin races, Virgil became what Homer
had been to Greece, " the poet." The decay of art and
letters in the third century only added a mystical and
hieratic element to his fame. Even to the Christian Church
he remained a poet sacred and apart : in his profound
tenderness and his mystical " yearning after the further
shore " as much as in the supposed prophecy of the fourth
Eclogue, they found and reverenced what seemed to them
like an unconscious inspiration. The famous passage of
St. Augustine, where he speaks of his own early love for
Virgil, shows in its half-hysterical renunciation how great
the chartft -of -the Virgilian art had been, and still was,
to him : Quid miserius misero, he cries, non miserante se
ipsuntf et flente Didonis mortem quae fiebat amando Aeneam,
non flente autem mortem meam quae fiebat non amando te ?
Deus lumen cordis mei, non te amabam, et haec non flebam,
sed flebam Didonem exstinctam^ferroqueextremasecutam^
sequens ipse extrema condita tua relic to te! * To the graver
and more matured mind of Dante, Virgil was the lord and
master who, even though shut out from Paradise, was
the chosen and honoured minister of God. Up to the
beginning of the present century the supremacy of Virgil
was hardly doubted. Since then the development of
scientific criticism has passed him through all its searching
processes, and in a fair judgment his greatness has rather
gained than lost. The doubtful honour of indiscriminate

• Confess,^ I. xii.

I.] Virgil, 99

praise was for a brief period succeeded by the attacks
of an almost equally undiscriminating censure. An ill-
judged partiality had once spoken of the Aeneid as some-
thing greater than a Roman Iliad: it was easy to show
that in the most remarkable Homeric qualities the Aeneid
fell far short, and that, so far as it was an imitation of
Homer, it could no more stand beside Homer than the
imitations of Theocritus in the Eclogues could stand beside
Theocritus. The romantic movement, with its impatience
of established fames, damned the Aeneid in one word
as artificial ; forgetting, or not seeing, that the Aeneid was
itself the fountain-head of romanticism. Long after the
theory of the noble savage had passed out of political
and social philosophy it lingered in literary criticism ; and
the distinction between " natural " and " artificial " poetry
was held to be like that between light and darkness. It
was not till a comparatively recent time that the leisurely
progress of criticism stumbled on the fact that all poetry
is artificial, and that the Iliad itself is artificial in a very
eminent and unusual degree.

No great work of art can be usefully judged by
comparison with any other great work of art. It may,
indeed, be interesting and fertile to compare one with
another, in order to seize more sharply and appreciate
more vividly the special beauty of each. But to press
comparison further, and to depreciate one because it has
not what is the special quality of the other, is to lose sight
of the function of criticism. We shall not find in Virgil
the bright speed, the unexhausted joy fulness, which, in
spite of a view of life as grave as Virgil's own, make the
Iliad and Odyssey unique in poetry ; nor, which is more
to the point as regards the Aeneid, the narrative power,
the genius for story-telling, which is one of the rarest of
literary gifts, and which Ovid alone among the Latin poets
possessed in any high perfection. We shall not find in
him, that high and concentrated passion .which i*) .Pindar

lOO Latin Literature, [II.

(as afterwards in Dante) fuses the elements of thought and
language into a single white heat. We shall not find in
him the luminous and untroubled calm, as of a spirit in
which all passion has been fused away, which makes the
poetry of Sophocles so crystalline and irreproachable. Nor
shall we find in him the great qualities of his own Latin
predecessors, Lucretius or Catullus. All this is merely
saying in amplified words that Virgil was not Lucretius
or Catullus, and that still less was he Homer, or Pindar,
or Sophocles ; and to this may be added, that he lived in
the world which the great Greek and Latin poets had
created, though he looked forward out of it into another.
Yet the positive excellences of the Aeneid are so
numerous and so splendid that the claim of its_ author to
be the Roman Homer is not unreasonable, if it be made
clear that the two poems are fundamentally disparate, and
that no more is meant than that the one poet is as eminent
in his own form and method as the other in his. In our
haste to rest Virgil's claim to supremacy as a poet on the
single quality in which he is unique and unapproachable
we may seem tacitly to assent to the judgment of his
detractors on other points. Yet the more one studies the
Aeneid, the more profoundly is one impressed by its quality
as a masterpiece of construction. The most adverse critic
would not deny that portions of the poem are, both in
dramatic and narrative quaHty, all but unsurpassed, and in
a certain union of imaginative sympathy with their fine
dramatic power and their stateliness of narration perhaps
V unequalled. The story of the last agony of Troy could not
be told with more breadth, more richness, more brilliance
than it is told in the second book : here, at least, the story
neither flags nor hurries; from the moment when the
Greek squadron sets sail from Tenedos and the signal-
flame flashes from their flagship, the scenes of the fatal
night pass before us in a smooth swift stream that gathers
weighjL And^ volume as it goes, till it culminates in the

I.] Virgil, lOl

vision of awful faces which rises before Aeneas when Venus
lifts the cloud of mortality from his startled eyes. The
episode of Nisus and Euryalus in the ninth book, and that
of Camilla in the eleventh, are in their degree as admirably
vivid and stately. The portraiture of Dido, again, in the
fourth book, is in combined breadth and subtlety one of
the dramatic masterpieces of human literature. It is idle
to urge that this touch is borrowed from Euripides or that
suggested by Sophocles, or to quote the Medea of Apol-
lonius as the original of which Dido is an elaborate imita-
tion. What Virgil borrowed he knew how to make his
own ; and the world which, while not denying the tender-
ness, the grace, the charm of the heroine of the Argo-
nauHcay leaves the Argonautica unread, has thrilled and
grown pale from generation to generation over the passionate
tragedy of the Carthaginian queen.

But before a deeper and more appreciative study of the
Aeneid these great episodes cease to present themselves as
detached eminences. That the Aeneid '\% unequal is true;
that passages in it here and there are mannered, and even
flat, is true also ; but to one who has had the patience to
know it thoroughly, it is in its total effect, and not in the
great passages, or even the great books, that it seems the
most consummate achievement. Virgil may seem to us to
miss some of his opportunities, to labour others beyond
their due proportion, to force himself (especially in the
later books) into material not well adapted to the distinctive
Virgilian treatment. The slight and vague portrait of the
maiden princess of Latium, in which the one vivid touch/
of her " flower-like hair " is the only clear memory we carry
away with us, might, in different hands — in those of Apollo-
nius, for instance, — have given a new grace and charm to
the scenes where she appears. The funeral games at the
tomb of Anchises, no longer described, as they had been
in early Greek poetry, from the mere pleasure in dwelling
upon their details, begin to become tedious before they

I02 Latin Literature. pi.

are over. In the battle-pieces of the last three books we
sometimes cannot help being reminded that Virgil is rather
wearily following an obsolescent literary tradition. But
when we have set such passages against others which, without
being as widely celebrated as the episode of the sack of
Troy or the death of Dido, are equally miraculous in their
workmanship — the end of the fifth book, for instance, or
the muster-roll of the armies of Italy in the seventh, or,
above all, the last hundred and fifty lines of the twelfth,
where Virgil rises perhaps to his very greatest manner —
we shall not find that the splendour of the poem depends
on detached passages, but far more on the great manner
and movement which, interfused with the unique Vir-
gilian tenderness, sustains the whole structure through and
through.

The merely technical quality of Virgil's art has never
been disputed. The Latin hexameter, "the stateliest
measure ever moulded by the lips of man," was brought
by him to a perfection which made any further develop-
ment impossible. Up to the last it kept taking in his
hands new^ refinements of rhythm and movement which
make the later "books of the Aeneid (the least successfiil
part of the poem in general estimation) an even more
fascinating study to the lovers of language than* the more
formally perfect work of the Georgics, or the earlier books
of the Aeneid itself. A brilliant modem critic has noted
this in words which deserve careful study. "The innova-
tions are individually hardly preceptible, but taken together
they alter the character of the hexameter line in a way
more easily felt than described. Among the more definite
changes we may note that there are more full stops in the
middle of lines, there are more elisions, there is a larger
proportion of short words, there are more words repeated,
more assonances, and a freer use of. the emphasis gained by
the recurrence of verbs in the same or cognate tenses.
Where passages thus characterised have come down to us

I-] Virgil. 103

still in the making, the effect is forced and fragmentary;
where they succeed, they combine in a novel manner the
rushing freedom of the old trochaics with the majesty
which is the distinguishing feature of Virgil's style. Art
has concealed its art, and the poet's last words suggest to
us possibilities in the Latin tongue which no successor has
been able to realise." Again, the psychological interest
and insight which keep perpetually growing throughout
VirgiPs work result in an almost unequalled power of ex-
pressing in exquisite language the half-tones and delicate
shades of mental processes. The famous simile in the
twelfth Aeneid —

Ac velut in somnis oculos ubi languida pressit
Node quieSf nequiquam avidos extendere cursus
Velle videmur, et in mediis conatibus aegri
Succidtmus, nee lingua valet, nee corpore notae
Sufficiunt vires aut vox et verba sequuntur —

is an instance of the amazing mastery with which he makes
language have the effect of music, in expressing the subtlest
processes of feeling.

But the specific and central charm of Virgil lies deeper
than in any merely technical quality. ^ The word which
expresses it most nearly is that of pity. In the most famous
of his single lines he speaks of the " tears of things ; " just
this sense of tears, this voice that always, in its most sustained
splendour and in its most ordinary cadences, vibrates with
a strange pathos, is what finally places him alone among
artists. This thrill in the voice, come colui che piange e dice,
is never absent from his poetry. In the "lonely words,"
in the " pathetic half-lines " spoken of by the two great
modern masters of English prose and verse, he perpetually
touches the deepest springs of feeling ; in these it is that
he sounds, as no other poet has done, the depths of beauty
and sorrow, of patience and magnanimity, of honour in
life and hope beyond death.

I04 Latin Literature, [II.

A certain number of minor poems have come down to
us associated more or less doubtfully with Virgil's name.
Three of these are pieces in hexameter verse, belonging
broadly to the class of the epyllion, or/'Httle epic," which
was invented as a convenient term to include short poems
in the epic metre that were not definitely pastorals either
in subject or treatment, and which the Alexandrian poets,
headed by Theocritus, had cultivated with much assiduity
and considerable success. The most important of them,
the Cuiex, or Gnat^ is a poem of about four hundred lines,
in which the incident of a gnat saving the life of a sleeping
shepherd from a serpent and being crushed to death in the
act is made the occasion of an elaborate description of the
infernal regions, from which the ghost of the insect rises
to reproach his unconscious murderer. That Virgil in his
youth wrote a poem with this title is established by the
words of Martial and Statius; nor is there any certain
argument against the Virgilian authorship of the extant
poem, but various delicate metrical considerations incline
recent critics to the belief that it is from the hand of an
almost contemporary imitator who had caught the Virgilian
manner with great accuracy. The Ciris, another piece of
somewhat greater length j on the story of Scylla and Nisus,
is more certainly the production of some forgotten poet
belonging to the circle of Marcus Valerius Messalla, and is
of interest as showing the immense pains taken in the
later Augustan age to continue the Virgilian tradition. The
third poem, the Moretum, is at once briefer and slighter in
structure and more masterly in form. It is said to be a
close copy of a Greek original by Parthenius of Nicaea,
a distinguished man of letters of this period who taught
Virgil Greek; nor is there any grave improbability in
supposing that the Moretum is really one of the early exer-
cises in verse over which Virgil must have spent years of his
laborious apprenticeship, saved by some accident from the
fate to which his own rigorous judgment condenmed the rest.

t] VirgiL 105

So far the whole of the poetry attributed to Virgil is in
the single form of hexameter verse, to the perfecting of
which his whole life was devoted. The other little pieces
in elegiac and lyric metres require but slight notice. Some
are obviously spurious; others are so slight and juvenile
that it matters little whether they are spurious or not. One
elegiac piece, the Copa^ is of admirable vivacity and grace,
and the touch in it is so singularly unlike the Virgilian
manner as to tempt one into the paradox of its authenticity.
That Virgil wrote much which he deliberately destroyed is
obviously certain; his fastidiousness and his melancholy
alike drove him towards the search after perfection, and
his mercilessness towards his own work may be measured
by his intention to bum the Aeneid. Not less by this
passionate desire of unattainable perfection than by the
sustained glory of his actual achievement, — his haunting and
liquid rhythms, his majestic sadness, his grace and pity, —
he embodies for all ages that secret which makes art the
life of life itself.

HORACE.

In that great turning-point of the world's history marked
by the establishment of the Roman Empire, the position
of Virgil is so unique because he looks almost equally
forwards and backwards. His attitude towards his own
age is that of one who was in it rather than of it. On
the one hand is his intense feeling for antiquity, based on
and reinforced by that immense antiquarian knowledge
which made him so dear to commentators, and which
renders some of his work so difficult to appreciate from
our mere want of information ; on the other, is that per-
petual brooding over futurity which made him, within a
comparatively short time after his death, regarded as a
prophet and his works as in some sense oracular. The
Sortes Vergilianae^ if we may believe the confused gossip
of the Augustan History, were almost a State institution,
while rationalism was still the State creed in ordinary
matters. Thus, while, in a way, he represented and, as it
were, gave voice to the Rome of Augustus, he did so in
a transcendental manner; the Rome which he represents,
whether as city or empire, being less a fact than an idea,
and already strongly tinged with that mysticism which we
regard as essentially mediaeval, and which culminated later
without any violent breach of continuity in the conception
of a spiritual Rome which was a kingdom of God on earth,

io6

II.] Horace. 107

and of which the Empire and the Papacy were only two
imperfect and mutually complementary phases ; quella Roma
onde Crista e Romano^ as it was expressed by Dante with
his characteristic width and precision.

To this mystical temper the whole mind and art of
Virgil's great contemporary stands in the most pointed
contrast. Msre than almost any other poet of equal
eminence, Horace lived in the present and actual world;
it is^ionly when he turns aside from it that he loses himself.
Certain external similarities of method there are between
them — above all, in that mastery of verbal technique which
made the Latin language something new in the hands of
both. Both were laborious and indefatigable artists, and
in their earlier acquaintanceship, at all events, were close
personal friends. But the five years' difference in their ages
represents a much more important interval in their poetical
development. The earlier work of Horace, in the years
when he was intimate with Virgil, is that which least shows
the real man or the real poet ; it was not till Virgil, sunk
in his Aeneid, and living in a somewhat melancholy retire-
ment far away from Rome, was within a few years of his
death, that Horace, amid the gaiety and vivid life of the
capital, found his true scope, and produced the work that
has made him immortal.

Yet the earlier circumstances of the two poets* lives had
been not unlike. Like Virgil, Horace sprang from the
ranks of the provincial lower middle class, in whom the
virtues of industry, frugality, and sense were generally
accompanied by little grace or geniality. But he was
exceptionally fortunate in his father. This excellent man,
who is always spoken of by his son with a deep respect
and affection, was a freedman *of Venusia in Southern
Italy, who had acquired a small estate by his economies as
a collector of taxes in the neighbourhood. Horace must
have shown some unusual promise as a boy ; yet, according
to his own accoimt, it was less from this motive than from

io8 Latin Literature, pi.

a disinterested belief in the value of education that his
&ther resolved to give him, at whatever personal sacrifice,
every advantage that was enjoyed by the children of the
highest social class. The boy was taken to Rome about
the age of twelve — ^ Virgil, a youth of seventeen, came there
from Milan about the same time — and given the best
education that the capital could provide. Nor did he
stop there ; at eighteen he proceeded to Athens, the most
celebrated university then existing, to spend several years
in completing his studies in literature and philosophy.
While he was there the assassination of Caesar took place,
and the Civil war broke out. Marcus Brutus occupied
Macedonia, and swept Greece for recruits. The scarcity of
Roman officers was so great in the newly levie(I~ legions
that the young student, a boy of barely twenty-one, with
no birth or connection, no experience, and no military or
organising ability, was not only accepted with eagerness,
but at once given a high commission. He served in the
Republican army till Philippi, apparently without any
flagrant discredit ; after the defeat, like many of his com-
panions, he gave up the idea of further resistance, and made
the best of his way back to Italy. HjeLfomuLJus little
estate forfeited, but he was not so important a person that
he had to fear proscription, and with the strong common
sense which he had already developed, he bought or begged
himself a small post in the civil service which just enabled
him to live. Three years, iater he was introduced by Virgil
to Maecenas, and his uninterrupted prosperity began.

Did we know more of the history of Horace's life in the
interval between his leaving the university and his becoming
one of the circle of recognised Augustan poets, much in his
poetical development might be less perplexing to us. The
effect of these years was apparently to throw him back,
to arrest or thwart what would have been his natural
growth. No doubt he was one of the men who (like Caesar
or Cromwell in other fields of action) develop late; but

•

II.] Horace. 109

something more than this seems needed to account for the
extraordinary weakness and badness of his first volume of
lyrical pieces, published by him when he was thirty-five.
In the first book of the Satires, produced about five years
earlier, he had shown much of his admirable later qualities,
— humour, sense, urbanity, perception, — but all strangely
mingled with a vein of artistic vulgarity (the worst perhaps
of all vulgarities) which is totally absent from his matured
writing. It is not merely that in this earlier work he is
often deliberately coarse — that was a literary tradition,
from which it would require more than ordinary originality
to break fi*ee, — but that he again and again allows himself
to fall into such absolute flatness as can only be excused
on the theory that his artistic sense had been checked or
crippled in its growth, and here and there disappeared in
his nature altogether. How elaborate and severe the self-
education must have been which he undertook and carried
through may be guessed from the vast interval that sepa-
rates the spirit and workmanship of the Odes from that of
the EpodeSy and can partly be traced step by step in the
autobiographic passages of the second book of Satires and
the later Epistles. We are ignorant in what circumstances
or under what pressure the Epodes were published; it is
a plausible conjecture that their faults were just such as
would meet the approbation of Maecenas, on whose favour
Horace was at the time almost wholly dependent; and
Horace may himself have been glad to get rid, as it were,
of his own bad immature work by committing it to publicity.
The celebrated passage in Keats* preface to Endymion,
where he gives his reasons for publishing a poem of whose
weakness and faultiness he was himself acutely conscious,
is of very wide application ; and it is easy to believe that,
after the publication of the Epodes, Horace could turn with
an easier and less embarrassed mind to the composition of
the Odes.

Meanwhile he was content to be known as a writer of

no Latin Literature, [11.

satire, one whose wish it was to bring up to an Augustan
polish the Hterary form already carried to a high degree
of success by Lucilius. The second book of Satires was
published not long after Xht Epodes, It shows in every
way an enormous advance over the first. He has shaken
himself free from the imitation of Lucilius, which alternates
in the earliest satires with a rather bitter and self-conscious
depreciation of the work of the older poet and his suc-
cessors. The prosperous turn Horace's own life had taken
was ripening him fast, and undoing the bad effects of earlier
years. We have passed for good out of the society of
Rupilius Rex and Canidia. At one time Horace must
have run the risk of turning out a sort of ineffectual
Francois Villon ; this, too, is over, and his earlier education
bears fruit in a temper of remarkable and delicate gifts.

This second book of Satires marks in one way the
culmination of Horace's powers. The brilliance of the
first years of the Empire stimulated the social aptitude and
dramatic perception of a poet who lived in the heart of
Rome, already free from fear or ambition, but as yet un-
touched by the melancholy temper which grew on him in
later years. He employs the semi-dramatic form of easy
dialogue throughout the book with extraordinary lightness
and skill. The familiar hexameter, which Lucilius had left
still cumbrous and verbose, is like wax in his hands ; his
perfection in this use of the metre is as complete as that of
Virgil in the stately and serious manner. And behind this
accomplished, literary method lies an unequalled perception
of common human nature, a rich vein of serious and quiet
humour, and a power of language the more remarkable
that it is so unassuming, and always seems as it were to
say the right thing by accident. With the free growth of
his natural humour he has attained a power of self-apprecia-
tion which is unerring. The Satires are full from end to
end of himself and his own affairs ; but the name of egoism
cannot be apphed to any self-revelation or self-criticism

no Horace. 1 1 1

which is so just and so certain. _From the opening lines
of the first satire, where he notes the faults of his own
earlier work, to the last line of the book, with its Parthian
shot at Canidia and the jeunesse orageuse that he had so
long left behind, there is not a page which is not full of
that self-reference which, in its truth and tact, constantly
passes beyond itself and holds up the mirror to universal
human nature. In reading the Satires we all read our own
minds and hearts.

Nearly ten years elapsed between the publication of the
second book of the Satires and that of the first book of
ihs "Epistles, Horace had passed meanwhile into later
middle life. He had in great measure retired from society,
and lived more and more in the quietness of his little estate
among the Sabine hills. Life was still full of vivid interest ;
but books were more than ever a second world to him,
and, like Virgil, he was returning with a perpetually in-
creasing absorption to the Greek philosophies, which had
been the earliest passion of his youth. Years had brought
the philosophic mind ; the more so that these years had
been filled with the labour of the Odes, a work of the
highest and most intricate effort, and involving the constant
study of the masterpieces of Greek thought and art. The
"monument more imperishable than bronze" had now
been completed ; its results are marked in the Epistles by
a new and admirable maturity and refinement. Good
sense, good feeling, good taste, — these qualities, latent from
the first in Horace, had obtained a final mastery over the
coarser strain with which they had at first been mingled ; ^
and in their shadow now appear glimpses of an inner
nature even more rare, from which only now and then he
lifts the veil with a sort of delicate self-depreciation, in an
occasional line of sonorous rhythm, or in some light touch
by which he gives a glimpse into a more magical view of
life and nature : the earliest swallow of spring on the coast,
the mellow autumn sunshine on a Sabine coppice, the

112 Latin Literature. pi.

everlasting sound of a talking brook ; or, again, the unfor-
gettable phrases, the fallentis semita vitae^ or quod petis hie
estf or ire tamen restat, that have, to so many niinds in so
many ages, been key-words to the whole of life.

It is in the Epistles that Horace reveals himself _most
intimately, and perhaps with the most subtle charm. But
the great work of his life, for posterity as well as for his
own age, was the three books of Odes which were published
by him in"23*'Brc., at the age of forty-two, and represent
the sustained eflfort -of about ten years. This collection
of eighty-eight lyrics was at once taken to the heart of
the world. Before a volume of which every other line
is as familiar as a proverb, which embodies in a quintes-
sential form that imperishable delight of literature to which
the great words of Cicero already quoted* give such
beautiful expression, whose phrases are on all men's lips
as those of hardly any other ancient author have been,
criticism is almost silenced. In the brief and graceful
epilogue, Horace claims for himself, with no uncertainty and
with no arrogance, such eternity as earth can give. The
claim was completely just. The school-book of the
European world, the Odes have been no less for nineteen
centuries the companions of mature years and the delight
of age — adoiescentiam agunt^ senectutem oblectant, may be
said of them with as much truth as ever now. Yet no
analysis will explain their indefinable charm. If the so-
called " lyrical cry " be of the essence of a true lyric, they
are not true lyrics at all. Few of them are free from a
marked artificiality, an almost rigid adherence to canon.
Their range of thought is not great ; their range of feeling
is studiously narrow. Beside the air and fire of a lyric of
Catullus, an ode of Horace for the moment grows pale
and heavy, cineris specie decoloratur. Beside one of the
pathetic half-lines of Virgil, with their broken gleams and
murmurs as of another world, a Horatian phrase loses lustre

♦iS«//-a, p. 68.

II.] Horace. 113

and sound. Yet Horace appeals to a tenfold larger audience
than Catullus — to a larger audience, it may even be said,
than Virgil. Nor is he a poets* poet : the refined and
exquisite technique of the Odes may be only appreciable
by a trained artist in language ; but it is the untrained mind,
on whom other art falls flat, that the art of Horace, by
some unique penetrative power, kindles and quickens.
His own phrase of "golden mediocrity" expresses with
some truth the paradox of his poetry ; in no other poet,
ancient or modern, has such studied and unintermitted
mediocrity been wrought in pure gold. By some tact or
instinct — the " felicity," which is half of the famous phrase
in which he is characterised by Petronius — he realised that,
limited as his own range of emotion was, that of mankind
at large was still more so, and that the cardinal matter was
to strike in the centre. Wherever he finds himself on the
edge of the range in which his touch is certain, he draws
back with a smile; and so his concentrated effect, within
his limited but central field, is unsurpassed, and perhaps
unequalled.

This may partly explain how it was that with Horace^
the Latin lyric stops dead. His success was so immediate
and so immense that it fixed the limit, so to speak, for
future poets within the confined range which he had chosen
to adopt ; and that range he had filled so perfectly that no
room was left for anything but imitation on the one hand,
or, on the other, such a painfiil avoidance of imitation as
would be equally disastrous in its results. With the
principal lyric metres, too, the sapphic and alcaic, he had
done what Virgil had done with the dactyHc hexameter,
carried them to the highest point of which the foreign Latin
tongue was capable. They were naturalised, but remained
sterile. When at last Latin lyric poetry took a new develop-
ment, it was by starting afresh from a wholly different point,
and by a reversion to types which, for the culture of the
early imperial age, were obsolete and almost non-existent.

114 Latin Literature. [U

The phrase, verbis felicissime audax, used of Horace as
a lyric poet by Quintilian, expresses, with something less
than that fine critic's usual accuracy, another quality which
goes far to make the merit of the Odes. Horace's use of
words is, indeed, remarkably dexterous; but less so from
happy daring than from the tact which perpetually poises
and balances words, and counts no pains lost to find the
word that is exactly right. His audacities — if one cares to
call them soi — in the use of epithet, in Greek constructions
(which he uses rather more freely than any other Latin
poet), and in allusive turns of phrase, are all carefully
calculated and precisely measured. His unique power of
compression is not that of the poet who suddenly flashes
out in a golden phrase, but more akin to the art of the
distiller who imprisons an essence, or the gem-engraver
working by minute touches on a fragment of translucent
stone. With very great resources of language at his disposal,
he uses them with singular and scrupulous frugality ; in his
measured epithets, his curious fondness for a number of
very simple and abstract words, and the studious simplicity
of effect 'in his most elaborately designed lyrics, he reminds
one of the method of Greek bas-reliefs, or, still more (after
allowing for all the difference made by religious feeling),
of the sculptured work of Mino of Fiesole, with its pale
colours and carefully ordered outlines. Phrases of ordinary
prose, which he uses freely, do not, as in Virgil's hands,
turn into poetry by his mere use of them ; they give rather
than receive dignity in his verses, and only in a few rare
instances, like the stately Motum ex Metello consule civicutity'
are they completely fused into the structure of the poem.
So, too, his vivid and clearly-cut descriptions of nature in
single lines and phrases stand out by themselves like golden
tesserae in a mosaic, each distinct in a glittering atmosphere
— qua tumidus rigat arva Nilus ; opacam portitus excipiebat
Arc ton ; nee prata canis albicant pruinis — a hundred phrases
like these, all exquisitely turned, and all with the same

II.] Horace. 115

effect of detachment, which makes them akin to sculpture,
rather than painting or music. Virgil, as we learn from
an interesting fragment of biography, wrote his first drafts
swiftly and copiously, and wrought them down by long
labour into their final structure; with Horace we may
rather imagine that words came to the surface slowly and
one by one, and that the Odes grew like the deposit, cell
by cell, of the honeycomb to which, in a later poem, he
compares his own workmanship. In some passages where
the Odes flag, it seems as though material had failed him
before the poem was finished, and he had filled in the gaps,
not as he wished, but as he could, yet always with the same
deliberate gravity of workmanship.

Horatii curiosa felicitas — this, one of the earliest criti-
cisms made on the Odes, remains the phrase which most
completely describes their value. Such minute elaboration,
on so narrow a range of subject, and within such confined
limits of thought and feeling, could only be redeemed from
dulness by the perpetual felicity — something between luck
and skill — that was Horace's secret. How far it was happy
chance, how far deliberately aimed at and attained, is a
question which brings us before one of the insoluble
problems of art; we may remind ourselves that, in the
words of the Greek dramatist Agathon, which Aristotle was
so fond of quoting, skill and chance in all art cling close
to one another. "Safe in his golden mediocrity," to use
the words of his own counsel to Licinius, Horace has some-
how or another taken deep hold of the mind, and even the
imagination, of mankind. This very mediocrity, so fine, so
chastened, so certain, is in truth as inimitable as any other
great artistic quality ; we must fall back on the word genius,
and remember that genius does not confine itself within
the borders of any theory, but works its own will.

With the publication of the three books of the Odes^ and
the first book of the Epistles^ Horace's finest and maturest
work was complete. In the twelve years of his life which

Ii6 Latin Literature. [IL

were still to run he published but little^ jxcaLJsjt here any
reason to suppose that he wrote more than he published.
In i j "B.a7 Tie comp^dri5y~ sjpecia l command, an ode "to

of the Secular GameT. Ttetask

"sung at the celebration
was one m which he was much hampered by a stringent
religious convention, and the result is interesting, but not
very happy. We may admire the skill with which formu-
laries of the national worship are moulded into the sapphic
stanza, and prescribed language, hardly, if at all, removed
from prose, made to run in stately, though stiff and monot-
onous, verse ; b^i^j^IT ^lltn^'^^*^^" ^'g ^^ ^^^ i>gg nuity, not o f
the poetry. The Jubilee Ode written by Lord Tennyson
is cunOttsty like the Carmen Seculare in its metrical in-
genuities, and in the way in which the unmistakeable
personal note of style sounds through its heavy and formal
movement.

F our years later a fourth b ^ftfc pf (^^^^ was publi sbed^the
greater part of which j:o£siste of poems ks^.distinctly,officiijil
than ^€'^ctiIar*SRmn. but written with reference to pubHc
affairs * by the direct commsuad of the JEmp^xprj^some in
celebration of the victories of Drusus and Tiberius on the
north-eastern frontier, and others in more general praise of
the peace and external prosperity established throughout
Italy under the new government. Together with these
official pieces he included some others : an early sketch for
the Carmen Seculare^ a curious fragment of literary criticism
in the form of an ode addressed to one of the young aris-
tocrats who followed the fashion of the Augustan age in
stud)dng and writing poetry, and eight pieces of the same
kind as his earlier odes, written at various times within the
ten years which had now passed since the publication of
the first three books. An introductory poem, of graceful
but half-ironical lamentation over the passing of youth,
seems placed at the head of the little collection in studious
depreciation of its importance. Had it not been for the
necessity of publishing the official odes, it is probable

^^%»

II.] Horace • WJ

enough that Horace would have left these few later lyrics
ungathered. They show the same care and finish in
workmanship as the rest, but there is a certain loss of
brilliance ; except one ode of mellow and refined beauty,
the famouis Diffugere nivesy they hardly reach the old level.
The creative impulse in Horace had never been very
powerful or copious; with growing years he became less
interested in the achievement of literary artifice, and turned
more completely to his other great field, the criticism of
life and literature. To the concluding years of his life
belong the three delightful essays in verse which complete
the Ust of his works. Two of these, which are placed
together as a second book of Epistles, seem to have been
published at about the same time as the fourth book of the
Odes, The first, addressed to the Emperor, contains the
most matured and complete expression of his views on
Latin poetry, and is in great measure a vindication of the
poetry of his own age against the school which, partly from
literary and partly from political motives, persisted in giving
a preference to that of the earlier Republic. In the second,
inscribed to one of his younger friends belonging to the
circle of Tiberius, he reviews his own hfe as one who was
now done with literature and literary fame, and was giving
himself up to the pursuit of wisdom. The melancholy of
temperament and advancing age is subtly interwoven in his
final words with the urbane humour and strong sense that
had been his companions through hfe : —

Lusisii satis, edisti satis atque bibisti,
Tempus abire tibi est, ne potum largius aequo
Rideat et pulse t lasciva decentius aetas.

A new generation, clever, audacious, and corrupt, had
silently been growing up under the Empire. Ovid was
thirty, and had published his Amores, The death of Virgil
had left the field of serious poetry to Uttle men. The
younger race bad learned only too well the lesson of minute

Ii8 Latin Literature. [II.

care and formal polish so elaborately taught them by the
earlier Augustan poets, and had caught the ear of the town
with work of superficial but, for the time, captivating
brilliance. Gloom was already beginning to gather round
the Imperial household; the influence of Maecenas, the
great support of letters for the last twenty years, was fast on
the wane. In the words just quoted, with their half-sad
and half-mocking echo of the famous passage of Lucretius,*
Horace bids farewell to poetry.

Bui4iterary criticism^ in which - he had so finp i tiB tf^, nn d
on 4Kbich he_was..a recognised. authont2;,_XQntinued to
inter fifit him ; and the more seriously mmded of the younger
poets turned to him for advice, which he was always willing
to give. The Epistteto the^^PisM^^i>^^
under the name of the Art of Poetry y seems to have^een
composed at intervals during these later years, and was,
perhaps, not published till after his death in the year 8 B.C.
It is a discussion of dramatic poetry, largely based on
Greek text-books, but full of Horace's own experience and
of his own good sense. Young aspirants to poetical fame
regularly began with tragedies ; and Horace, accepting this
as an actual fact, discusses the rules of tragedy with as
much gravity as if he were dealing with some really Hving
and national form of poetry. This discursive and fragmentary
essay was taken in later ages as an authoritative treatise;
and the views expressed by Horace on a form of poetical
art with which he had little practical acquaintance had,
at the revival of literature, and even down to last century,
an immense influence over the structure and development
of the drama. Just as modem comedy based itself on
imitation of Plautus and Terence, and as the earliest
attempts at tragedy followed haltingly in the steps of
Seneca, so as regards the theory of both, Horace, and not
the Greeks, was the guiding influence.

Among the many amazing achievements of the Greek

* Supra, p. 48.

II.] Horace, i ig

genius in the field of human thought were a lyrical poetry
of unexampled beauty, a refined critical faculty, and, later
than the great thinkers and outside of the strict schools, a
temperate philosophy of life such as we see afterwards in the
beautifiil personality of Plutarch. In all these three Horace
interpreted Greece to the world, while adding that peculiarly
Roman urbanity — the spirit at once of the grown man as
distinguished from children, of the man of the world, and
of the gentleman — which up till now has been a dominant
ideal over the thought and life of Europe.

PROPERTIUS AND THE ELEGISTS.

Those years of the early Empire in which the names
of Virgil and Horace stand out above all the rest were
a period of great fertility in Latin poetry. Great poets
naturally bring small poets after them; and there was no
age at Rome in which the art was more assiduously
practised or more fashionable in society. The Court set a
tone which was followed in other circles, and more espe-
cially among the younger men of the old aristocracy, now
largely excluded from the public life which had engrossed
their parents under the Republic. The influence of the
Alexandrian poets, so potent in the age of Catullus, was
not yet exhausted ; and a wider culture had now made the
educated classes familiar with the whole range of earlier
Greek poetry as well. Rome was full of highly educated
Greek scholars, some of whom were themselves poets of
considerable merit. It was the fashion to form libraries;
the public collection, formed by Augustus, and housed in
a sumptuous building on the Palatine, was only the largest
among many others in ftie great houses of Rome. The
earlier Latin poets had known only a small part of Greek
literature, and that very imperfectly; their successors had
been trammelled by too exclusive an admiration of the
Greek of the decadence. Virgil and Horace, though pro-
fessed students of the Alexandrians, had gone back them-
selves, and had recalled the attention of the pubUc, to the

120

III.] Augustan Tragedy. 121

poets of free Greece, and had stimulated the widely felt
longing to conquer the whole field of poetry for the Latin
tongue.

For this attempt, tradition and circumstance finally
proved too strong ; and Augustan poetry, outside of these
two great names, is largely a chronicle of failure. This
was most eminently so in the drama. Augustan tragedy
^eeras never to have risen for a moment beyond mere
academic exercises. Of the many poets who attempted it,
nothing survives beyond a string of names. Lucius Varius
Rufus, the intimate friend of both Virgil and Horace, and
one of the two joint-editors of the Aeneid after the death
of the former, wrote one tragedy, on the story of Thyestes,
which was acted with applause at the games held to
celebrate the victory of Actium, and obtained high praise
from later critics. But he does not appear to have repeated
the experiment ; like so many other Latin poets, he turned
to the common path of annalistic epic. Augustus himself
began a tragedy of Ajax^ but never finished it. Gains
Asinius PoUio, the first orator and critic of the period, and
a magnificent patron of art and science, also composed
tragedies more on the antique model of Accius and Pacuvius,
in a dry and severe manner. But neither in these, nor
in the work of the young men for whose benefit Horace
wrote the Epistle to the Pisos^ was there any real vitality ;
the precepts of Horace could no more create a school
of tragedians than his example could create a school of
lyric poets.

The poetic forms, on the other hand, used by Virgil were
so much more on the main line of tendency that he stands
among a large number of others, some of whom might have
had a high reputation but for his overwhelming superiority.
Of the other essays made in this period in bucolic poetry
we know too Uttle to speak with any confidence. But
both didactic poetry and the little epic were largely culti-
vated, and the greater epic itself was not without followers.

122 Latin Literature. pi.

The extant poems of the Culex and Ciris have ab-eady
been noted as showing with what skill and grace unknown
poets, almost if not absolutely contemporary with Virgil,
could use the slighter epic forms. Varius, when he
abandoned tragedy, wrote epics on the death of Julius
Caesar, and on the achievements of Agrippa. The few
fragments of the former which survive show a remarkable
power and refinement; Virgil paid them the sincerest of
all compliments by conveying, not once only but again and
again, whole lines of Varius into his own work. Another
intimate friend of Virgil, Aemilius Macer of Verona, wrote
didactic poems in the Alexandrian manner on several
branches of natural history, which were soon eclipsed by the
fame of the Georgics, but remained a model for later
imitators of Nicander. One of these, a younger contem-
porary of Virgil called Gratius, or Grattius, was the author
of a poem on hunting, still extant in an imperfect form.
In its tame and laboured correctness it is only interesting
as showing the early decay of the Virgilian manner in the
hands of inferior men.

A more interesting figure, and one the loss of whose
works is deeply to be regretted, is that of Gaius Cornelius
Grgllus, the earliest and one of the most brilliant of the
Augustan poets. Like Varro Atacinus, he was bom in
Narbonese Gaul, and brought into Roman poetry a new
touch of Gallic vivacity and sentiment. The year of his
birth was the same as that of VirgiPs, but his genius matured
much earlier, and before the composition of the Eclogues he
was already a celebrated poet, as well as a distinguished
man of action. The history of his life, with its swift rise
from the lowest fortune to the splendid viceroyalty of
Egypt, and his sudden disgrace and death at the age of
forty- three, is one of the most dramatic in Roman history.
The translations from Euphorion, by which he first made
his reputation, followed the current fashion ; but about the
same time he introduced a new kind of poetry, the erotic

III.] Callus. 123

elegy, which had a swift and far-reaching success. To
Gallus, more than to any other single poet, is due the
nat uralisati on in Latin of the elegiac couplet, which, together
with the lyrics ot Horace and the Virgilian hexameter,
makes up the threefold poetical achievement of the Augustan
period, and which, after the Latin lyric had died out with
Horace himself, halved the field with the hexameter. For
the remaining literature of the Empire, for that of the Middle
Ages so far as it followed classical models, and even for
that of the Renaissance, which carries us down to within
a measurable distance of the present day, the hexameter as
fixed by Virgil, and the elegiac as popularised by Gallus
and rapidly brought to perfection by his immediate followers,
are the only two poetical forms of real importance.

The elegiac couplet had, of course, been in use at Rome
long before ; Ennius himself had employed it, and in the
Ciceronian age Catullus had written in it largely, and not
without success. But its successful use had been hitherto
mainly confined to short pieces, such as would fall within
the definition of the Greek epigram. The four books
of poems in which Gallus told tBe story of his passion
for the courtesan Cytheris (the Lycoris of the tenth
Eclogue) showed the capacities of the metre in a new light.
The fashion they set was at once followed by a crowd of
poets. The literary circles of Maecenas and Messalla had
each their elegiac poet of the first eminence ; and the early
death of both Propertius and Tibullus was followed, amid
the decline of the other forms of the earlier Augustan
poetry, by the consummate briUiance of Ovid.

Of the Augustan elegiac poets, Sextus Propertius, a native
of Assisi in Umbria, and introduced at a very early age to
the circle of Maecenas, is much the most striking and
interesting figure, not only from the formal merit of his
poetry, but as representing a type till then almost unknown
in ancient literature. Of his life little is known. Like
Virgil, he lost his patrimonial property in the confiscations

124 Latin Literature. [II.

which followed the Civil war, but he was then a mere child.
He seems to have been introduced to imperial patronage
by the publication of the first book of his Elegies at the age
of about twenty. He died young, before he was thirty-five,
if we may draw an inference from the latest allusions in his
extant poems; he had then written four other books of
elegiac pieces, which were probably published separately
at intervals of a few years. In the last book there is a
noticeable widening of range of subject, which foreshadows
the further development that elegiac verse took in the
hands of Ovid soon after his death.

In striking contrast to Virgil or Horace, Propertius is
a genius of great and, indeed, phenomenal precocity. His
first book of Elegies, the Cynthia monobiblos of the gram-
marians, was a literary feat comparable to the early achieve-
ments of Keats or Byron. The boy of twenty had already
mastered the secret of elegiac verse, which even Catullus
had used stiffly and awkwardly, and writes it with an ease,
a colour, a sumptuousness of rhythm which no later poet
ever equalled. The splendid cadence of the opening

couplet — ^ ^ , - ^ ^ - . . / ^ -. J - ^ ^ - ' /
Cynthia^prima suis miserum me cepitocellis

ContackiTn nuilis'ante ^upidinibus—r ^-.j 0;j -

must have come on its readers with the shock of a new
revelation. Nothing like it had ever been written in Latin
before : itself and alone it assures a great future to the
Latin elegiac. His instinct for richness of sound is equally
conspicuous where it is found in purely Latin phrases, as in
the opening of the sixteenth elegy —

Quaefueram magnis olim patefacta triumphis

lanua Tarpeiae nota pudicitiae
Cuius inaurati celebrarunt limina currus

Captorum lacrimis uniida supplicibus,

and where it depends on a lavish use of Greek ornament, as
in the opening of the third —

III.] Propertitis, 125

Qualis Thesea iacuit cedente carina
Languida desertis Gnosia litoribus,

Qualis et accubuit primo Cepheia somno
Libera iam duris cotibus Andromede, .

Even when one comes to them fresh from Virgil, lines like
these open a new world of sound. The Greek elegiac, as it
is known to us by the finest work of the epigrammatists, had
an almost unequalled flexibility and elasticity of rhythm ;
this quality Propertius from the first seized, and all but
made his own. By what course of reasoning he was led in
his later work to suppress this large and elastic treatment,
and approximate more and more closely to the fine but
somewhat limited and metallic rhythm which has been
perpetuated by the usage of Ovid, we cannot guess. In
this first book he ends the pentameter freely with words of
three, four, and five syllables ; the monotony of the per-
petual dissyllabic termination, which afterwards became the
normal usage, is hardly compensated by the increased
smoothness which it gives the verse.

But this new power of versification accompanied a new
spirit even more remarkable, which is of profound import
as the precursor of a whole school of modem European
poetry. The CyntKia is the first appearance in literature
of the neurotic young man, who reappeared last century
in Rousseau's Confessions and Goethe's Werther, and who
has dominated a whole side of French literatiure since
Alfred de Musset. The way had been shown half a
century before by that remarkable poet, Meleager of
Gadara, whom Propertius had obviously studied with keen
appreciation. Phrases in the Cynthia, like —

Turn mihi constantis deiecit luminafastus
Et caput impositis pressit Amor pedibus^
or —

Qui non ante patet donee manus attigit ossa^

are in the essential spirit of Meleager, and, though not

0--

126 Latin Literature, [II.

verbally copied from him, have the precise quality of his
rh3rthms and turas of phrase. But the abandonment to
sensibility, the absorption in self-pity and thfi.,.sfintiment
of passion, are carried by Propertius to a far greater length.
The self-abasement of a line like —

Sis quodcumque voles ^ non aUena tameriy

is in the strongest possible contrast to that powerful
passion which fills the poetry of Catullus, or to the
romantic tenderness of the Eclogues; and in the extraordi-
nary couplet —

Me sifUy quern semper voluit fortuna iacere,
Hanc anitnam extremae reddere nequitiae^

" the expense of spirit in a waste of shame " reaches its
culminating point. This tremulous self-absorption, rather
than any defect of eye or imagination, is the reason of
the extraordinary lapses which now and then he makes
both in description and in sentiment. The vivid and
picturesque sketches he gives of fashionable life at watering-
places and country-houses in the eleventh and fourteenth
elegies, or single touches, hke that in the remarkable
couplet —

Me mediae noctes^ me sidera prona iaceniem^
Frigidaque Eoo me dolet aura gelu^

show that where he was interested neither his eye nor his
language had any weakness; but, as a rule, he is not
interested either in nature or, if the truth be told, in
C)mthia, but wholly in himself. He ranks among the
most learned of the Augustan poets ; but, for want of the
rigorous training and self-criticism in which Virgil and
Horace spent their lives, he made on the whole but a
weak and ineffective use of a natural gift perhaps equal
to either of theirs. Thus it is that his earliest work is
at the same time his most fascinating and brilliant. After
the Cynthia he rapidly became, in the mordant phrase

rfMH

in.j Propertius. 127

used by Heine of De Musset, un jeune homme (Tun Men
beau passe. S ome prem onition of early death seems to
have h aunted him; and the want of self-control in his
poetry may reflect actual physical weakness united with
his vivid imagination.

The second and third books of the Elegies,^ though
they show some technical advance, and are without the
puerilities which here and there occur in the Cynthiay
are on the whole immensely inferior to it in interest and
charm. There is still an occasional Une of splendid
beauty, like the wonderful —

Sunt apud infernos tot milia formosarum ;

an occasional passage of stately rh3rthm, like the lines
beginning —

Quandocunque tgitur nostros mors clausit ocellos ;

but the smooth versification has now few surprises; the
learning is becoming more mechanical ; there is a tendency
to say over again what he had said before, and not to say
it quite so well.

Through these two books Cynthia is still the main
subject. But with the advance of years, and his own
growing fame as a poet, his passion — if that can be called
a passion which was so self-conscious and so sentimental —
fell away from him, and left his desire for literary repu-
tation the really controlling motive of his work. In the
introductory poem to the fourth book there is a new and
almost aggressive tone with regard to his own position
among the Roman poets, which is in strong contrast to
the modesty of the epilogue to the third book. The
inflated invocation of the ghost of Caliimachus laid him
fatally open to the quietly disdainful reference by which,
without even mentioning Propertius by name, Horace met

* These are the two parts of what is printed as book iL in the older
editions.

12$ Lafm Literature. JJL

A a year or two later in the second book of the EfisUes,
But even Horace is not in£dlible ; and Propertiiis was, at
all events, justified in regarding himself as the head of a
new school of poetry, and one which struck its roots wide
and deep.

In the fourth and fifth books of the Elegies there is a
wide range of subject ; the verse is being tested for various
purposes, and its flexibility answers to almost every de-
mand. But already we feel its fatal facility. The passage
beginning Atque ubi iam Venerem, in the poem where he
contrasts his own life with those of the followers of riches
and ambition, is a dilution into twelve couplets of eight
noble lines of the Georgics, with an effect almost as feeble,
if not so grotesque, as that of the later metaphrasts, who
occupied themselves in turning heroic into elegiac poems
by inserting a pentameter between each two lines. The
sixth elegy of the same book is nothing but a cento of
translations from the Anthology, strung together and fastened
up at the end by an original couplet in the worst and
most puerile manner of his early writing. On the other
hand, these books include fresh work of great merit, and
some of great beauty. The use of the elegiac metre to
tell stories from Graeco-Roman mythology and legendary
Roman history is begun in several poems which, though
Propertius has not the story-telling gift of Ovid, showed
the way to the delightful narratives of the Fasti. A few
of the more personal elegies have a new and not very
agreeable kind of realism, as though De Musset had been
touched with the spirit of Flaubert In one, the ninth
of the fourth book, the realism is in a different and
pleasanter vein; only Herrick among English poets has
given such imaginative charm to straightforward descrip-
tions of the ordinary private life of the middle classes.
Tlie fifth book ends with the noble elegy on Cornelia^
the wife of Faulus Aemiliijs Lepidus, in which all that
k best in Propertius* nature at last finds splendid and

^mitmBSM

TIL] Propertiui\ 129

memorable expression. It has some of his common fail-
ings, — passages of inappropriate learning, and a little falling
off towards the end. But where it rises to its height, in
the lines familiar to all who know Latin, it is unsurpassed
in any poetry for grace and tenderness.

• Nunc tibi commendo communia pignora natos;

Haec cura et cineri spirat inusta meo.
Fungere matemis vicibus pater : ilia meorum

Omnis erit collo turba fovenda tuo,
Oscula cum dederis tua flentibus^ adice matris ;

Tola domus coepit nunc onus esse tuum,
Et siquid doliturus eris, sine testibus illis I

Cum venient, siccis oscula falle genis :
Sat tibi sint nodes quas de me, PaukyfaAges^

Somniaque in faciem reddita saepe meam.

In these lines, hardly to be read without tears, Propertius
for once rises into that clear air in which art passes beyond
the reach of criticism. What he might have done in
this new manner had he lived longer can only be con-
jectured; at the same age neither Virgil nor Horace had
developed their full genius. But the perpetual recurrence
in the later poems of that brooding over death, which had
already marked his juvenile work, indicates increasing
exhaustion of power. Even the sparkling elegy on the
perils of a lover's rapid night journey from Rome to Tibur
passes at the end into a sombre imagination of his own
grave ; and the fine and remarkable poem (beginning with
the famous Sunt aliquid Manes) in which the ghost of
Cynthia visits him, is full of the same morbid dwelling
on the world of shadbws, where the " golden^ girl" awaits
her forgetful lover. Atque hoc sollicitum vince sopore caput
had become the sum of his prayers. But a little while
afterwards the restless brain of the poet found the sleep
that it had so long desired.
At a time when literary criticism was so powerful at

130 Latin Literature. pi.

Rome, and poetry was ruled by somewhat rigid canons
of taste, it is not surprising that more stress was laid on
the defects than on the merits of Propertius* poetry. It
evidently annoyed Horace ; and in later times Propertius
remained the favourite of a minority, while general taste
preferred the more faultless, if less powerfully original,
elegiacs of his contemporary, Albius Tibullus. "This pleasing
and graceful poet was a few years older than Propertius,
and, like him, died at the age of about thirty-five. He
did not belong to the group of court poets who formed
the circle of Maecenas, but to a smaller school under
the patronage of Marcus Valerius Messalla, a distinguished
member of the old aristocracy, who, though accepting the
new government and loyal in his service to the Emperor,
held somewhat aloof from the court, and lived in a small
literary world of his own. Tibullus published in his lifetime
two books of elegiac poems ; after his death a third volume
was published, containing a few of his posthumous pieces,
together with poems by other members of the same circle.
Of these, six are elegies by a young poet of the upper
class, writing under the name of Lygdamus, and plausibly
conjectured to have been a near relative of Tibullus. One,
a panegyric on Messalla, by an unknown author, is without
any poetical merit, and only interesting as an average
specimen of the amateur poetry of the time when, in the
phrase of Horace —

Populus calet una
Scribendi studio; pueri patresque severi
Fronde comas vincti cenant et carmina dictant

The curious set of little poems going under the name
of Sulpicia, and included in the volume, will be noticed
later.

Tibullus might be succinctly and perhaps not unjustly
described as a Virgil without the genius. The two poets
died in the same year, and a contemporary epigram speaks

iMHMMHM

III.] Tibullus. 131

of them as the recognised masters of heroic and elegiac
verse ; while the famous tribute of Ovid, in the third book
of the AmoreSy shows that the death of Tibullus was regarded
as fin overwhelming loss by the general world of letters.
" P]^cg.,^nd fine," the well-chosen epithets of Quintilian,
are in themselves no slight praise; and the poems reveal
a gentleness of nature and sincerity of feeling which make
us think^^of-their author less with admiration than with a
sort of quiet affection. No two poets could be more
strongly contrasted than Tibullus and Propertius, even
when their subject and manner of treatment approximate
most closely. In Tibull us the eagernes s, the audacity, the
irregular brilliance o f Prop ertius are wholly^ a[jse»t-i-^&^aie
the leverisn self-consciousness and the want of good taste
and good sense which are e quallv ch aracteristic of the latter.
Poetry is with him, not the outburaLof passion, or the
fruit of high imagination, but the natural and refined
expression of sincere feeling in equable and melodious
verse. The delightful epistle addressed to him by Horace
shows how high he stood in the esteem and affection of
a severe critic, and a man whose friendship was not lightly
won or lavishly expressed. He stands easily at the head
of Latin poets of the second order. In deligacy^ in refine-
ment,, in grace of rhythm and d ictioi^ he cannot be easily
surpassed; he only wants the final and incommunicable
touch of genius which separates really great artists from the
rest of the world.

■^

IV.

The Peace of the Empire, secured by the victory of Ac-
tium, and fully established during the years which followed
by Augustus and his lieutenants, inaugurated a new era of
social life in the capital. The saying of Augustus, that he
found Rome brick and left it marble, may be applied
beyond the sphere of mere architectural decoration. A
French critic has well observed that now, for the first time,
the Court and the City existed in their full meaning. Both
had an organised life and a glittering external ease such
as was hardly known again in Europe till the reign of
the Grand Monarque. The enormous accumulated wealth
of the aristocracy was in the mass hardly touched by all
the waste and confiscations of the civil wars ; and, in spite
of a more rigorous administration, fi-esh accumulations
were continually made by the new official hierarchy, and
flowed in from all parts of the Empire to feed the luxury
and splendour of the capital. Wealth and peace, the in-
creasing influence of Greek culture, and the absence of
political excitement, induced a period of brilliant laxity
among the upper classes. The severe andfrug^ morals
of the Republic still survived in great families, as well as
among that middle class, from which the Empire drew
its solid support; but in fashionable society there was
a marked and rapid relaxation of morals which was vainly
combated by stringent social and sumptuary legislation.

132

IV.] Julia and Sulpicia. 133

The part taken by women in social and political life is
among the most powerful factors in determining the general
aspect of an age. This, , which had already been great
under the later Republic, was now greater than ever. The
Empress Livia was throughout the reign of Augustus,
and even after his death, one of the most important
persons in Rome. Partly under her influence, partly from
the temperament and policy of Augustus himself, a sort
of court Puritanism grew up, like that of the later years of
Louis Quatorze. The aristocracy on the whole disliked
and despised it ; but the monarchy was stronger than they.
The same gloom overshadows the end of these two long
reigns. Sentences of death or banishment fell thick among
the leaders of that gay and profligate society; to later
historians it seemed that all the result of the imperial policy
had been to add hypocrisy to profligacy, and incidentally to
cripple and silence literature.

Of this later Augustan period Ovid is the representative
poet. The world in which he lived may be illustrated by
a reference to two ladies of his acquaintance, both in
different ways singularly typical of the time. Julia, the
only daughter of Augustus, still a mere child when her
father became master of the world, was brought up with
a strictness which excited remark even among those who
were familiar with the strict traditions of earlier times.
Married, when a girl of fourteen, to her cousin, Marcus
Claudius Marcellus; after his death, two years later, to
the Emperor's chief Ueutenant, Marcus Agrippa; and a
third time, when he also died, to the son of the Empress
Livia, afterwards the Emperor Tiberius, — she was through-
out treated as a part of the State machinery, and as some-
thing more or less than a woman. But she turned out
to be, in fact, a woman whose beauty, wit, and recklessness
were alike extraordinary, and who rose in disastrous revolt
against the system in which she was forced to be a pivot.
Ailike by birth and genius she easily took the first place

134 Latin Literature. [II.

in Roman society ; and under the very eyes of the Emperor
she multiplied her lovers right and left, and launched out
into a career that for years was the scandal of all Rome.
When she had reached the age of thirty-seven, in the same
year when Ovid^s Art of Love was published, the axe
suddenly fell ; she was banished, disinherited, and kept till
her death in rigorous imprisonment, almost without the
necessaries of life. Such were the firstfruits of the social
reform inaugurated by Augustus and sung by Horace.

In the volume of poems which includes the posthumous
elegies of TibuUus, there is also contained a group of short
pieces by another lady of high birth and social standing,
a niece of Messalla and a daughter of Servius Sulpicius,
and so belonging by both parents to the inner circle of
the aristocracy. Nothing is known of her life beyond what
can be gathered from the poems. But that they should
have been published at all, still more that they should have
been published, as they almost certainly were, with^ the
sanction of Messalla, is a striking instance of the unique
freedom enjoyed by Roman women of the upper classes,
and of their disregard of the ordinary moral conventions.
The only ancient parallel is in the period of the Aeolic
Greek civilisation which produced Sappho. The poems,
are addressed to her lover, who (according to the fashion
of the time — like Catullus' Lesbia or Propertius' Cynthia)
is spoken of by a Greek name, but was most probably
a young Roman of her own circle. The writer, a young,
and apparently an unmarried woman, addresses him with
a frankness of passion that has no idea of concealment.
She does not even take the pains to seal her letters to
him, though they contain what most women would hesitate
to put on paper. They have all the same directness,
which sometimes becomes a splendid simplicity. One note,
reproaching him for a supposed infidelity —

Si tibi cura togae potior pressumque quaHUo
Scortum quam Servi^filia Suipicia —

rfMH

IV.] Ovid. 135

has all the noble pride of Shakespeare's Imogen. Of the
worid and its ways she has no girlish ignorance; but the
talk of the world, as a motive for reticence, simply does not
exist for her.

Where young ladies of the upper classes had such freedom
as is shown in these poems, and used it, the ordinary lines
of demarcation between respectable women and women
who are not respectable must have largely disappeared.
It has been much and inconclusively debated whether the
Hostia and Plania, to whom, under assumed names, the
amatory poems of Propertius and TibuUus were addressed,
were more or less married women (for at Rome there were
degrees of marriage), or women for whom marriage was a
remote and immaterial event. The same controversy has
raged over Ovid's Corinna, who is variously identified as
Julia the daughter of the Emperor herself, as a figment of
the imagination, or as an ordinary courtesan. The truth is,
that in the society so brilliantly drawn in the Art of Love,
such distinctions were for the time suspended, and we are
in a world which, though for the time it was living and
actual, is as unreal to us as that of the Restoration dramatists.

The young lawyer and man of fashion, Publius Ovidius
Naso, who was the laureate of this gay society, was a few
years younger than Propertius, with whom he was in close
and friendly intimacy. The early death of both Propertius
and Tibullus occurred before Ovid published his first
volume; and Horace, the last survivor of the older
Augustans, had died some years before that volume was
followed by any important work. The period of Ovid's
greatest fertility was the decad* immediately following the
opening of the Christian era; he outlived Augustus by
three years, and so laps over into the sombre period of
the Julio-Claudian dynasty, which culminated in the reign
of Nero.

As the eldest surviving son of an opulent equestrian
family of Upper Italy, Ovid was trained for the usual

136 Latin Literatiwe, [II.

career of civil and judicial office. He studied for the bar
at Rome, and, though he never worked hard at law, filled
several judicial offices of importance. But his interest was
almost wholly in the rhetorical side of his profession; he
" hated argument ; '* and from the rhetoric of the schools to
the highly rhetorical poetry which was coming into fashion
there was no violent transition. An easy fortune, a brilliant
wit, an inexhaustible memory, and an unfailing social tact,
soon made him a prominent figure in society; and his
genuine love of literature and admiration for genius —
an mingled in his case with the slightest trace of literary
jealousy or self-consciousness — made him the friend of the
whole contemporary world of letters. He did not begin to
publish poetry very early ; not because he had any delicacy
about doing so, nor because his genius took long to ripen,
but from the good-humoured laziness which never allowed
him to take his own poetry too seriously. When he was
about thirty he published, to be in the fashion, a volume
of amatory elegiacs, which was afterwards re-edited and
enlarged into the existing three books of Amores, Probably
about the same time he formally graduated in serious poetry
with his tragedy of Medea, For ten or twelve years after-
wards he continued to throw off elegiac poems, some light,
others serious, but all alike in their easy polish, and written
from the very first with complete and effortless mastery of
the metre. To this period belong the HeroideSy the later
pieces in the Amores^ the elaborate poem on the feminine
toilet called De Medicamine Faciei, and other poems now
lost. Finally, in 2 or i B.C., he published what is perhaps
on the whole his most remarkable work, the three books
De Arte Amatoria,

Just about the time of the publication of the Art of Love^

the exile of the elder Julia fell like a thunderbolt on Roman

society. Staggered for a little under the sudden blow, it

. soon gathered itself together again, and a perpetual influx

of younger men tiad woiiii: 1 q ilhered round her daughter

IV.] Ovid, 137

and namesake, the wife of Lucius Aemilius Paulus, into
a circle as corrupt, if not so accomplished, as that of which
Ovid had been a chief ornament. He was himself now
forty; though singularly free from literary ambition, he
could not but be conscious of his extraordinary powers, and
willing to employ them on larger work. He had already
incidentally proved that he possessed an instinct for
narrative such as no Roman poet had hitherto had —
such, indeed, as it would be difficult to match even in
Greek poetry outside Homer. A bom story-teller, and
an accomplished master of easy and melo3iDtt9-^^rse, he
naturally turned for subjects to tfi^ inexhaustible stores of
the Graeco^Rjoman mythology, and formed the scheme of
his Metamorphoses and Fasti. Both poems were all but
complete, but only the first half of the latter had been
pubUshed, when, at the end of the year 8, his life and work
were suddenly shattered by a mysterious catastrophe. An
imperial edict ordered him to leave Rome on a named day,
and take up his residence at the small barbarous town of
Tomi, on the Black Sea, at the extreme outposts of civilisa-
tion. No reason was assigned, and no appeal allowed.
The cause of this sudden action on the part of the Emperor
remains insoluble. T he_only reason ever offi ^^'^^^y C[i"^'^,
that the publication of the^^4r/_^ /"/^n^ ('"^if;h w^*' oir^o^y

ten years old) was'Hn offence ajgaiast jmbli c^ morals,^s jaQ
flitniyZ tp''Tta^e jjeen 'evet' 'm^^ seriously, rhe aGusions
Ovid himself makes to his own " error "or " crime " are
not meant to be intelligible, and none of the many theories
which have been advanced fully satisfies the facts. But,
whatever may have been the cause — whether Ovid had
become implicated in one of those aristocratic conspiracies
against which Augustus had to exercise constant vigilance,
or in the intrigues of the younger JuUa, or in some domestic
scandal that touched the Emperor even more personally —
it brought his literary career irretrievably to the ground.
The elegies which he continued to pour forth from his ^\a5:.^

138 Latin Literature. pi.

of exile, though not without their grace and pathos, struggle
almost from the first under the crowning unhappiness of un-
happiness, that it ceases to be interesting. The five books
of the Tristia, written during the earlier years of his banish-
ment, still retain, through the monotony of their subject,
and the abject humility of their attitude to Augustus, much
of the old dexterity. In the four books of Epistles from
Pontus, which continue the lamentation over his calamities,
the failure of power is evident. He went on writing pro-
fusely, because there was nothing else to do; panegyrics
on Augustus and Tiberius alternated with a natural history
of fish — the Halieutica — and with abusive poems on his real
or fancied enemies at Rome. While Augustus lived he did
not give up hopes of a remission, or at least an alleviation,
of his sentence ; but the accession of Tiberius, who never
forgot or forgave anything, must have extinguished them
finally ; and he died some three years later, still a heart-
broken exile.

Apart from his single tragedy, from a few didactic or
mock-didactic pieces, imitated from Alexandrian originals,
and from his great poem of the Metamorphoses^ the whole
of Ovid's work was executed in the elegiac couplet. His
earliest poems closely approximate in their management of
this metre to the later work of Propertius. The narrower
range of cadence allowed by the rule which makes every
couplet regularly end in a dissyllable, involves a monotony
which only Ovid*s immense dexterity enabled him to
overcome. In the Fasti this dexterity becomes almost
portentous : when his genius began to fail him, the essential
vice of the metre is soon evident. But the usage was
stereotyped by his example ; all through the Empire and
through the Middle Ages, and even down to the present
day, the Ovidian metre has been the single dominant type :
and though no one ever managed it with such ingenuity
again, he taught enough of the secret to make its use
possible for almost every kind of subject His own elegiac

IS^il

^mmm

IV.] Ovid, 139

poetry covers an ample range. In the impassioned rhetoric
of the Heroides, the brilliant pictures of life and manners
in the De Arte Amatoria, or the sgarjcling narratives of the
Fasd^ the same sure and swift touch is applied to widely
diverse forms and moods.' Ovid was a trained rhetorician
and an accomplished man of the world before he began to
write poetry; that, in spite of his worldliness and his
glittering rhetoric, he has so much of feeling and charm, is
the highest proof of his real greatness as a poet.

But this f eelin g and charm are the growth of more
mature years. In his early poetry there is no passion and
little sentiment. He writ es_pf { ove^ but never as a lover;
nor, with all his quickness^jof insight and adroitness of
impersonation, does he ever catch the lover's tone. From
the amatory poems written in his own person one might
judge him to be quite heartless, the mere hard_aad polished
mirror of a corrupt society ; and in the Art of Love he
is the keen observer of men and women whose wit and
lucid common sense are the more insolently triumphant
because untouched by any sentiment or sympathy. We
know him from other sources to have been a man of really
warm and tender feeling ; in the poetry which he wrote as
laureate of the world of fashion he keeps this out of sight,
and outdoes them all in cynical worldliness. It is only
when writing in the person of a woman — as in the Phyllis
or Laodamia of the Heroides — that he allows himself any
approach to tenderness. The Ars Amatoria^ full as it is of
a not unkindly humour, of worldly wisdom and fine insight,
is perhaps the most immoral poem ever written. The most
immoral, not the most demoralizing : he writes for an
au3ience for whom morality, apart from the code of
good manners which society required, did not exist; and
wholly free as it is from morbid sentiment, the one great
demoralizing influence over men and women, it may be
doubted whether the poem is one which ever did any
reader serious harm, while few works are more intellectually

140 Latin Literature. pi.

stimulating within a certain limited range. To readers for
whom its qualities have exhausted or have not acquired
their stimulating force, it merely is tiresome; and this,
indeed, is the fate which in the present age, when wit is not
in vogue, has very largely overtaken it

Interspersed in the Art of Love are a number of stories
from the old mythology, introduced to illustrate the argu-
ment, but set out at greater length than was necessary for
that purpose, from the active pleasure it always gives Ovid
to tell a story. When he conceived the plan of his Meta-
morphoses, he had recognised this narrative instinct as his
special gift. His tragedy of Medea had remained a single
effort in dramatic form, unless the Heroides can be classed
as dramatic monologues. The Medea, but for two fine
single lines, is lost ; but all the evidence is clear that Ovid
had no natural turn for dramatic writing, and that it was
merely a clever tour de force. In the idea of the Meta-
morphoses he found a subject, already treated in more than
one Alexandrian poem, that gave full scope for his narrative
gift and his fertile ingenuity. The result was a poem as
long, and almost as unflagging, as the Odyssey. A vast
mass of multifarious stories, whose only connection is the
casual fact of their involving or alluding to some transforma-
tion of human beings into stones, trees, plants, beasts, birds,
and the like, is cast into a continuous narrative. The
adroitness with which this is done makes the poem rank as
a masterpiece of construction. The atmosphere of romantic
fable in which it is enveloped even gives it a certain
plausibility of effect almost amounting to epic unity. In
the fabulous superhuman element that appears in all the
stories, and in their natural surroundings of wood, or
mountain, or sea — always realised with fresh enjoyment and
vivid form and colour — there is something which gives the
same sort of unity of effect as we feel in reading the
Arabian Nights. It is not a real world ; it is hardly even
a world conceived as real ; but it is a world so plausible.

" I

IV.] Ovid. 141

so directly appealing to simple instincts and unclouded
senses, above all so completely take^ for granted, that the
illusion is, for the time, all but complete. For later ages,
the Metamorphoses became the great text-book- of classical
mythojiigy ; the legends were understood as Ovid had told
them, and were reproduced (as, for instance, throughout
the whole of the painting of the Renaissance) in the spirit
and colour of this Italian story-teller.

For the metre of the Metamorphoses Ovid chose the
heroic hexameter, but used it in a strikingly new and
original way. He makes no attempt, as later poets un-
successfully did, at reproducing the richness of tone and
intricacy of modulation which it had in the hands of Virgil,
Ovid's hexameter is a thing of his own. It becomes with
him almost a new metre — light, brilliant, and rapid, but
with some monotony of cadence, and without the deep
swell that it had, not in Virgil only, but in his predecessors.
The swift, equable movement is admirably adapted to the
matter of the poem, smoothing over the transitions from
story to story, and never allowing a story to pause or flag
halfway. Within its limits, the workmanship is faultless.
The style neither rises nor sinks with the variation of
subject. One might almost say that it was without moral
quality. Ovid narrates the treachery of Scylla or the
incestuous passion of Myrrha with the same light and
secure touch as he applies to the charming idyl of Baucis
and Philemon or the love-tale of Pyramus and Thisbe ; his
interest is in what happened, in the story for the story's
sake. So, likewise, in the rhetorical evolution of his
thought, and the management of his metre, he writes
simply as the artist, with the artistic conscience as his only
rule. The rhetorician is as strong in him as it had been
in the Amores ; but it is under better control, and seldom
leads him into excesses of bad taste, nor is it so over-
mastering as not to allow free play to his better qualities,
his kindliness, his good-humour, his ungrudging appreciation

14^ Latin Literature. [11.

of excellence. In his evolution of thought — or his play of
fancy, if the expression be preferred — he hi i nn n l n r tnr is
and precision akin to great intellectual qualities ; and it is
this, perhaps, which has made him a favourite with so
many great men of letters. Shakespeare himself, in his
earlier work, alike the plays and the poems, writes in the
Ovidian manner, and often in what might be direct imitation
of Ovid j the motto from the Atnores prefixed to the Venus
and Adonis is not idly chosen. Still more remarkable,
because less superficially evident, is the affinity between
Ovid and Milton. At first sight no two poets, perhaps,
could seem less alike. But it is known that Ovid was one
of Milton's favourite poets; and if one reads the Meta-
morphoses with an eye kept on Faradi^^JLpst, th e intel lectual
resemblance, in the manner of treatment of thought and
language, is abundantly evident, as well in the general
structure of their rhetoric as in the lapses of taste and
obstinate puerilities {non ignoravit vitia sua sed amavit
might be said of Milton also), which come from time to
time in their maturest work.

The Metamorphoses was regarded by Ovid himself as
his masterpiece. In the first impulse of his despair at
leaving Rome, he burned his own copy of the still incom-
plete poem. But other copies were in existence; and
though he writes afterwards as though it had been published
without his correction and without his consent, we may
suspect that it was neither without his knowledge nor
against his will; when he speaks of the manus ultima as
wanting, it is probably a mere piece of harmless affectation
to make himself seem Ij^er the author of the Aeneid. The
case was different with the Fasti^ the other long poem
which he worked at side by side with the Metamorphoses.
The twelve books of this work, dealing with the calendar
of the twelve months, were also all but complete when he
was banished, and the first six, if not actually published
had, at all events, got into private circulation. At Tomi

IV.] Ovid. 143

he began a revision of the poem which, apparently, he never
completed. The first half of the poem, prefaced by a fresh
dedication to Germanicus, was published, or republished,
after the death of Augustus, to whom, in its earlier form,
it had been inscribed ; the second half never reached the
public. It cannot be said that Latin poetry would be much
poorer had the first six books been suppressed also. The
student of metrical forms would, indeed, have lost what is
metrically the most dexterous of all Latin poems, and the
archaeologist some curious information as to Roman
customs ; but, for other readers, little would be missed but
a few of the exquisitely told stories, like that of Tarquin
and Lucretia, or of the Rape of Proserpine, which vary the
somewhat tedious chronicle of astronomical changes and
national festivals.

The poems of the years of Ovid*s exile, the Tristia and
the Letters from Pontus, a re a melancho lv record of
flagging vitality and failing powers. His adulation of the
Emperor and the imperial family passes all bounds; it
exhausts what would otherwise seem the inexhaustible
copiousness of his vocabulary. The long supplication to
Augustus, which stands by itself as book ii. of the Tristia^
is the most elaborate and skilful of these pieces ; but those
which may be read with the most pleasure are the letters
to his wife, for whom he had a deep affection, and whom
he addresses with a pathos that is quite sincere. As hope
of recall grew fainter, his work failed more and more ; the
incorrect language and slovenly versification of some of
the Letters from Pontus are in sad contrast to the Ovid of
ten years before, and if he went on writing till the end, it was
only because writing had long been a second nature to him.

Of the extraordinary force and fineness of Ovid's natural
genius, there never have been two opinions; had he but
been capable of controlling it, instead of indulging it, he
might have, in Quintilian's opinion, been second to no
Roman poet. In his Medea, the critic adds, he did show

144 Latin Literature, pi.

some of this self-control ; its loss is the more to be lamented.
But the easy good-nature of his own disposition, no less
than the whole impulse of the literary fashion then pre-
valent, was fatal to the continuous exercise of such severe
self-education : and the man who was so keen and shrewd
in his appreciation of the follies of lovers had all the weak-
ness of a lover for the faults of his own poetry. The
delightful story of the three lines which his critical friends
urged him to erase proves, if proof were needed, that this
weakness was not blindness, and that he was perfectly
aware of the vices of his own work. The child of his time,
he threw all his brilliant gifts unhesitatingly into the scale
of new ideas and new fashions ; his " modernity," to use
a current phrase of the present day, is greater than that of
any other ancient author of anything like his eminence.

Prisca invent alios y ego me nunc denique natum
Gratulor: haec aetas moribus apta meis —

this is his deliberate attitude throughout his life.

Such a spirit has more than once in the history of the
arts marked the point from which their downward course
began. / do not sing the old things, for the new are far better^
the famous Greek musician Timotheus had said four centuries
earlier, and the decay of Greek music was dated from that
period. But to make any artist, however eminent, respon-
sible for the decadence of art, is to confuse cause with effect ;
and the note of ignominy affixed by Augustus to the Art
of Love was as futile as the action of the Spartan ephor
when he cut the strings away from the cithara of Timotheus.
The actual achievement of Ovid was to perfect and popu-
larise a poetical form of unusual scope and flexibility; to
throw a vivid and lasting life into the world of Graeco-
Roman mythology; and, above all, to complete the work
of Cicero and Horace in fixing a certain ideal of civilised
manners for the Latin Empire and for modem Europe.
He was not a poet of the first order ; yet few poets of the
first order have done a work of smcK wide importance.

LIVY.

The Ciceronian age represents on the whole the culmina-
tion of Latin prose, as the Augustan does the culmination
of Latin poetry. In the former field, the purity of the
language as it had been used by Caesar and Cicero could
hardly be retained in a period of more diffused culture ; and
the influence of the schools of rhetoric, themselves based
on inferior Greek models, became more and more marked.
Poetry, too, was for the time more important than prose,
and one result was that prose became infected with certain
qualities of poetical style. The reign of Augustus includes
only one prose writer of the first rank, the historian Titus
Livius.

Though not living like Virgil or Horace in the immediate
circle of Augustus and under direct court patronage, Livy
was in friendl y relations with the Empero r and his family,
and accepted_the__iieHLrule with cordiality, if without much
enthusiasm. Of his life, which seems to have been wholly
spent in literary pursuits, little is known. He was born at
Padua in the year of Julius Caesar's first consulship, and
had survived Augustus by three years when he died at the
age of seventy-five. In earlier life he wrote some philo-
sophical dialogues and treatises on rhetoric which have not
been preserved. An allusion in the first book of his history
shows that it was written, or at all events published, after
the first and before the second closing of the temple of
L 145

(

146 Latin Literature, pi.

Janus by Augustus, in the years 29 and 25 b.c. For forty
years thereafter he continued this colossal task, which, like
the Decline and Faiiy was published in parts from time to
time. He lived to bring it 4own as far as the death of
Drusus, the younger son of the Empress Livia, in the year
9 B.C. The division into books, of which there were one
hundred and forty- two in the whole work, is his own ; these
again were arranged in voluminay or sections issued as
separate volumes, and containing a varying number of
books. The division of the work into decads was made
by copyists at a much later period, and was no part of the
author's own plan. Only one- fourth of the whole history
has survived the Middle Ages. This consists of the first,
the third, the fourth, and half of the fifth decad, or books
i.-x. and xxi.-xlv. of the work ; of the rest we only possess
brief tables of contents, drawn up in the fourth century, not
from the original work but from an abridgment, itself now
lost, which was then in use. The scale of the history is
very different in the two surviving portions. The first
decad carries it from the foundation of the city through
the Regal and early Republican periods down to the third
Samnite war, a period of four centuries and a half. The
twenty-five extant books of the third, fourth, and fifth
decads cover a period of fifty years, from the beginning
of the second Punic to the conclusion of the third Mace-
donian war. This half century, it is true, was second in
importance to none in Roman history. But the scale
f>fth ^wf^rk hnri n ^^niitant tftTid finny tn n xp and as H
approached more m odem time s, and more abundant docu-
ments ; and wh^n he reached his own time, nearly a book
was occu pied with the ev ents oi_each-year.

Founded as it was, at least for the earlier periods, upon
the works of preceding annalists, the history of Livy adopted
from them the arrangement by years marked by successive
consulates, which was familiar to all his readers. He even
speaks of his own work as annates^ though its formal title

v.] Livy, 147

seems to have been Historiae (or Libri Historiarum) ah
Urbe Condita. There is no reason to suppose that he
intended to conclude it at any fixed point. In a preface
to one of the later volumes, he observed with justifiable
pride that he had already satisfied the desire of fame, and
only went on writing because the ta sk of composition had-
^become a fixed habit, which he could not discontinue with-
out uneasiness. His fame even in his lifetime was un-
bounded. He seems to have made no enemies. The
acrid criticism of Asinius PoUio, a purist by profession, on
certain provincialities of his style, was an insignificant
exception to the general chorus of praise. In treading
the delicate ground of the Civil wars his candour towards
the Republican party led Augustus to tax him half jestingly
as a Pompeian ; yet Livy lost no favour either with him
or with his more jealous successor. The younger Pliny
relates how a citizen of Cadiz was so fired by his fame that
he travelled the whole way to Rome merely to see him,
and as soon as he had seen him returned home, as though
Rome had no other spectacles to offer.

Roman history had hitherto been divided between the
annalists and the writers of personal and contemporary
memoirs. Sallust was almost the only example of the
definite historical treatment of a single epoch or episode of
the past. As a rule each annalist set himself the same
task, of compiling, from the work of his predecessors, and
such additional information as he found accessible to him,
a general history of the Roman people from its beginnings,
carried down as far towards his own day as he found time
or patience to continue it. Each successive annalist tried
to improve upon previous writers, either in elegance of style
or in copiousness of matter, and so far as he succeeded in
the double task his work replaced those already written.
It was not considered unfair to transcribe whole passages
from former annalists, or even to copy their works with
additions and improvements, and bring them out as new

148 Latin Literature. [IL

and original histories. The idea of literary property seems,
in truth, to be very much a creation of positive law. When
no copyright existed, and when the circulation of any book
was confined within very small limits by the cost and labour
of transcription, the vaguest ideas prevailed, not at Rome
alone, on what we should now regard as the elementary
morality of plagiarism. Virgil himself transferred whole
lines and passages, not merely from earlier, but even from
contemporary poets ; and m prose writing, one annalist
cut up and reshaped the work of another with as little
hesitation as a mediaeval romance-writer.

In this matter Livy allowed himself full Uberty ; and his
work absorbed, and in a great measure Jilotted out, jhose of
his 4U£(lfi££ssors. In his general preface he speaks of the
two motives which animate new historians, as the hope that
they will throw further light on events, or the belief that
their own art will excel that of a ruder age. The former
he hardly professes to do, at least as regards times anterior
to his own ; his hope is that by his pen the great story of
the RepubUc will be told more impressively, more vividly,
in a manner more stimulating to the reader and more
worthy of the subject than had hitherto been done. This
purpose at least he amply and nobly carried out ; nor can
it be said to be a low ideal of the function of history.

So far, however, as the office of the historian is to in-
vestigate facts, to get at the exact truth of what physically
happened, or to appreciate the varying degrees of proba-
bility with which that truth can be attained, Livy falls far
short of any respectable ideal. His romantic temper^and
the ethical bent of hi s mind alike indisposed him to set
anj^very great value on facts as such^ His historylSeais

little trace of any independent mvestigation. Sources for
history lay round him in immense profusion. The enormous
collections made by Varro in every field of antiquarian re-
search were at his hand, but he does not seem to have
used them, still less to have undertaken any similar labour

v.] Livy, 149

on his own account. While he never wilfully distorts the
truth, h e takes comparati vely litt le pains to d isengage it
frnm fal^l^f^ and ir^^^^^'^i^g In his account of a battle
in Greece he finds that Valerius Antias puts the number of
the enemy killed as inside ten thousand, while Claudius
Quadrigarius says forty thousand. The discrepancy does
not ruffle him, nor even seem to him very important ; he
contents himself with an expression of mild surprise that
Valerius for once allows himself to be outstripped in exag-
gerating numbers. Yet where Valerius is his only authority
or is not contradicted by others, he accepts his statements,
figures and all, without uneasiness. This instance is typical
of his method as a critical — or rather an uncritical — historian.
When his authorities do not disagree, he accep ts what they
say wi thouj ^jjanrh gufiStLon. When they do disagree, he
has several courses open to him, and takes one or another
according to his fancy at the moment. Sometimes he
cou nts heads and J bllows the majority of his authors;
sometimes he adopts the account of the earliest ; often he
tries to combine or mediate between discordant stories;
when this is not easy, he chooses the account which is
most superficially probable or most dramatically impressive.
He even bases a choice on the ground that the story he
adopts shows Roman statesmanship or virtue in a more
favourable light, though he finds some of the inventions of
Roman vanity too much for him to swallow. Throughout
he tends to let his own preferences decide whether or not
a story is true. In rebus tarn antiquis si quae similia vert
sini pro veris accipiantur is the easy canon which he lays
down for early and uncertain events. Even when original
documents of great value were extant, he refrains fi:om
citing them if they do not satisfy his taste. During the
second Punic war a hymn to Juno had been written by
Livius Andronicus for a propitiatory festival. It was one
of the most celebrated documents of early Latin ; but he
refiises to insert it, qu the ground that to the taste of his

(

150 Latin Literature. pi.

own day it seemed rude and harsh. Yet as a historian,
and not a collector of materials for history, he may plead
the privilege of the artist. The modern compromise by
which documents are cited in notes without being inserted
in the text of histories had not then been invented ; and
notes, even when as in the case of Gibbon's they have a
substantive value as literature, are an adjunct to the history
itself, rather than any essential part of it. A more serious
charge is, that when h e^had trustworthv authorities to follow,
he di d not appreciate their value . In his account of the
Macedonian wars, he often follows Polybius all but word
for word, but without apparently realising the Greek
historian's admirable accuracy and judgment Such ap-
preciation only comes of knowledge ; and Livy ladled the
vast learning and the keen jcritical insight of Gibbon, to
whom in many respects he has a strong afiinity. His
imperfect knowledge of the military art and of Roman law
often confuses his narrative of campaigns and constitutional
struggles, and gives too much reason to the charge of
negligence brought against him by that clever and impudent
critic, the Emperor Caligula.

Yet, in spite of all his inaccuracies of detail, and in spite
of the graver defect of insufficient historical perspective,
which makes him colour the whole political development
of the Roman state with the ideas of his own time, the
history of Rome as narrated by Livy is essentially tme
and vit;al» because based on a large insight into the perma-
nent qualities of human nature. The spirit in which he
wrilts history is well illustrated by the speeches. These,
in a waY« set the t«»ie of die whole work. He does not
al^^l in Ihem to lef^roduce tthe substance of words actual^
:$|)iOib»U <>r er^m to imitate die lone of die time in iriiidi
the ^p«tch is laid. He uses them as a vivid andjdnunatic
med^ of poitrapn^ character and motsve. The mediod,
in itts bfiUiuice and its tntth to pexmaneat fids^is She
Ibdl of Slytke^peaie^s C^m/^ivtais. Sodi truth, acu n d in g to

v.] Livy, 151

the celebrated aphorism in Aristotle's Poetics, is the truth of
poetry rather than of history : and the history of Livy, in
this, as in his opulent and coloured diction, has some affinity
to poetry. Yet, when such insight into motive and such
vivid creative imagination are based on really large knowl- \
edge and perfect sincerity, a higher historical truth may
be reached than by the most laborious accumulation of
documents and sifting of evidence.

Livy*s humane and romantic temper prevented him from \
being a political partisan, even if political partisanship had
been consistent with the view he took of his own art.
In common with most educated Romans of his time, he
idealised the earlier RepubHc, and spoke of his own age
as fatally degenerate. But this is a tendency common to
writers of all periods. He frequently pauses to deplore the
loss of the ancient qualities by which Rome had grown
great — simplicity, equity, piety, orderliness. In his remark-
able preface he speaks of himself as turning to historical
study in order to withdraw his mind from the evils of his /
own age, and the spectacle of an empire tottering to the
fall under the weight of its own greatness and the vices
of its citizens. " Into no State," he continues, " were greed
and luxury so long in entering ; in these late days avajice
has grown with wealth, and the frantic pursuit of pleasure
leads fast towards a collapse of the whole social fabric ; in
our ever-accelerating downward course we have already
reached a point where our vices and their remedies are
alike intolerable." But his idealisation of earlier ages was
that of the romantic student rather than the reactionary
politician. He is always on the side of order, moderation, I
conciliation; there was nothing politically dangerous to
the imperial government in his mild republicanism. He
shrinks instinctively from violence wherever he meets it,
whether on the side of the populace or of the governing
class; he cannot conceive why people should not be
reasonable, and live in peace under a moderate and settled \

152 Latin Literature, [II.

government. This was the temper which was welcome at
court, even in men of Pompeian sympathies.

So, too, Livy*s attitude towards the established religion
and towards the beliefs of former times has the same senti-
mental tinge. The moi^al reform attempted by Augustus
had gone hand in hand with an elaborate revival and
amplification of religious ceremony. Outward conformity
at least was required of all citizens. Expedit esse deos^ et
ut expedit esse putemus ; " the existence of the gods is a
matter of public policy, and we must believe it accordingly,"
Ovid had said, in the most daring and cynical of his poems.
The old associations, the antiquarian charm, that lingered
round this faded ancestral belief, appealed strongly to the
romantic patriotism of the historian. His own religion was
a sort of mild fatalism ; he pauses now and then to draw
rather commonplace reflections on the blindness of men
destined to misfortune, or the helplessness of human wisdom
and foresight against destiny. But at the same time he
gravely chronicles miracles and portents, not so much from
any belief in their truth as because they are part of the
story. The fact that they had ceased to be regarded
seriously in his own time, and were accordingly in a great
measure ceasing to happen, he laments as one among many
declensions from older and purer fashions.

As a master of style, Livy is supreme among historians.
He marks the highest point which the enlarged and enriched
prose of the Augustan age reached just before it began
to fall into decadence. It is no longer the famous urbanus
sermo of the later Republic, the pure and somewhat austere
language of a governing class. The influence of Virgil is
already traceable in Livy, in actual phrases whose use had
hitherto been confined to poetry, and also in a certain
warmth of colouring unknown to earlier prose. To Augus-
tan purists this relaxation of the language seemed provincial
and unworthy of the severe tradition of the best Latin ; and
it was this probably, rather than any definite novelties in

v.] Livy, 153

grammar or vocabulary, that made Asinius PoUio accuse
Livy of " Patavinity." But in the hands of Livy the new
style, by its increased volume and flexibility, is as admirably
suited to a work of great length and scope as the older
had been for the purposes of Caesar or Sallust. It is drawn,
so to speak, with a larger pattern ; and the added jiotuiess
of tone enables him to advance without flagging through
the long and intricate narrative where a simpler diction
must necessarily have growa monotonous, as one more
florid would be cloying^^^n the earlier books we seem to
find the manner stilK^ little uncertain and tentative, arid
a little trammelled by the traditional manner of the older
annalists ; as he proceeds in his work he falls into his
stride, and advances with a movement as certain as that
of Gibbon, and claimed by Roman critics as comparable
in ease and grace to that of Herodotus. The periodic
structure of Latin prose which had been developed by
Cicero is carried by him to an even greater complexity,
and used with a greater daring and freedom; a sort of
fine carelessness in detail enhancing the large and con-
tinuous excellence of his broad effect. Even where he
copies Polybius most closely he invariably puts life and
grace into his cumbrous Greek. For the facts of the war
with Hannibal we can rely more safely on the latter ; but
it is in the picture of Tiry tli^ yl, wr n rr it l i irr l irrnir iin
His imagination never fails to kindle at great actions ; it
is he, more than any other author, who has impressed
the great soldiers and statesmen of the Republic on the
imagination of the world.

Quin Decios Drusosque procul, saevutnque securi
Aspice Torquatum^ et referentem signa Camillum . . .
Quis te, magne Cato, taciturn^ aut /<?, Cosse, relinquatf
Quis Gracchi genus y aut geminoSy duo fulmina belU^
Scipiadas, cladem Libyacy parvoque potentem
Fabriciunty vel te sulcOy Serranc, serenUm /— •

154 Latin Literature. [II.

l|is whole work is a splendid expansion of that vision of
Rome which passes before the eyes of Aeneas in the
Fortunate Fields of the underworld. In the description of

I great events, no less than of great characters and actions,
he rises and kindles with his subject. His eye for dramatic
effect is extraordinary. The picture of the siege and
storming of Saguntum, with which he opens the stately
narrative of the war between Rome and Hannibal, is an
instance of his instinctive skill ; together with the masterly
sketch of the character of Hannibal and the description
of the scene in the Carthaginian senate-house at the recep-
tion of the Roman ambassadors, it forms a complete prelude
to the whole drama of the war. His great battle-pieces,
too, in spite of his imperfect mastery of military science,
are admirable as works of arf^^ Among others may be .
specially instanced, as masterpieces of execution, the account — p "
of the victory over Antiochus at Magnesia in the thirty-
seventh book, and, still more, that in the forty-fourth of
the fiercely contested battle of Pydna, the desperate heroism
of the Pelignian cohort, and the final and terrible destruction
of the Macedonian phalanx.

Yet, with all his admiration for great men and deeds,

^ what most of all kindles Livy*s imagination and sustains
his enthusiasm is a subject larger, and to him hardly more
abstract, the Roman Commonwealth itself, almost per-
sonified as a continuous living force. This is almost the
only matter in which patriotism leads him to marked
partiality. The epithet " Roman " signifies to him all that
is high and noble. That Rome can do no wrong is a sort
of article of faith with him, and he has always a tendency
to do less than justice to her enemies. The two qualities ^^

of eloquence and candour are justly ascribed to him by
Tacitus, but from the latter some deduction must be made
when he is dealing with foreign relations and external
diplomacy. Without any intention to falsify history, he is
sometimes completely carried away by his romantic enthu-
siasm for Roman statesmanship.

v.] Livy. 155

This canonisation of Rome is Livy's largest and most
abiding achievement. The elder Seneca, one of his ablest
literary contemporaries, observes, in a fine passage, that
when historians reach in their narrative the death of some
great man, they give a summing-up of his whole life as
though it were a^ eulogy pronounced over his grave. Livy,
he adds, the most candid of all historians in his apprecia-
tion of genius, does this with unusual grace and sympathy|
The remark may bear a wider scope ; for the whole of his
work is animated by a similar spirit towards the idealised
Commonwealth, to the story of whose life he devoted his
splendid literary gifts. As the title of Gesta Populi Rotnani
was given to the Aeneid on its appearance, so the Historiae
ab Urbe Condita might be called, with no less truth, a
funeral eulogy — consummatio totius viiae et quasi funebris
laudaiio — delivered, by the most loving and most eloquent
of her children, over the grave of the great Republic.

VI.

THE LESSER AUGUSTANS.

The impulse given to Latin literature by the great poets
and prose writers of the first century before Christ ebbed
slowly away. The end of the so-called Golden Age may
be conveniently fixed in the year which saw the death of
Livy and Ovid; but the smaller literature of the period
suffered no violent breach of continuity, and one can hardly
name any definite date at which the Silver Age begins.
Until the appearance of a new school of writers in the reign
of Nero, the history of Roman literature is a continuation
of the Augustan tradition. But it is continued by feeble
hands, and dwindles away more and more under several
unfavourable influences. Among these influences may be
specially noted the growing despotism of the Empire, which
had already become grave in the later years of Augustus,
and under his successors reached a point which made free
writing, like free speech, impossible ; the perpetually in-
creasing importance of the schools of declamation, which
forced a fashion of overstrained and unnatural rhetoric on
both prose and verse ; and the paralysing effect of the great
Augustan waiters themselves, which led poetry at all events
to lose itself in imitations of imitations within an arbitrary
and rigid limit of subjects and methods.

In mere amount of production, however, literature re-
mained active during the first half-century of the Christian era.
That far the greater part of it has perished is probably a

156

VI.] Minor Augustan Poetry. 157

matter for congratulation rather than regret ; even of what
survives there is a good deal that we could well do without,
and such of it as is valuable is so rather from incidental
than essential reasons. Scribimus indocti doctique poemata
passim, Horace had written in half-humorous bitterness;
the crowd of names that flit like autumn leaves through the
pages of Ovid represent probably but a small part of the
immense production. Among the works of Ovid himself
were included at various times poems by other contemporary
hands — some, like the Consolatio ad Liviam, and the elegy
on the Nut-tree y without any author's name ; others of known
authorship, like the continuation by Sabinus of Ovid's
Heroides, in the form of replies addressed to them by their
lovers. Heroic poetry, too, both on mythological and
historical subjects, continued to be largely written ; but few
of the writers are more than names. Cornelius Severus,
author of an epic on the civil wars, gave in his earlier work
promise of great excellence, which was but poorly fulfilled.
The fine and stately passage on the death of Cicero, quoted
by Seneca, fully reaches the higher level of post-Virgilian
style. Two other poets of considerable note at the time,
but soon forgotten after their death, were Albinovanus Pedo
and Rabirius. The former, besides a Theseid, wrote a
narrative and descriptive poem in the epic manner, on the
northern campaigns of Germanicus ; the latter was the
author of an epic on the conflict with Antonius, which was
kept alive for a short time by court favour; the stupid
and amiable aide-de-camp of Tiberius, Velleius Paterculus,
no doubt repeating what he heard in official circles, speaks
of him and Virgil as the two most eminent poets of the age !
Tiberius himself, though he chiefly wrote in Greek, occa-
sionally turned off" a copy of Latin verses ; and his nephew
Germanicus, a man of much learning and culture, composed
a Latin version of the famous Phaenomena of Aratus, which
shows uncommon skill and talent. Another, and a more
important work of the same type, but with more original

158 Latin Literature, (TL

power^ and less a mere adaptation of Greek originalsy is
the Astronomica, ascribed on doubtful manuscnpt evidence
to an otherwise unknown Gaius or Marcus Manilius. This
poem, from the allusions in it to the destruction of the three
legions under Varus, and the retirement of Tiberius in
Rhodes, must have been begun in the later years of
Augustus, though probably not completed till after his
death. As extant it consists of five books, the last being
incomplete ; the full plan seems to have included a sixth,
and would have extended the work to about five thousand
lines, or two-thirds of the length of the De Rerum Natura.
Next to the poem of Lucretius it is, therefore, much the
largest in bulk of extant Latin didactic poems. The
oblivion into which it has fallen is, perhaps, a little hard if
one considers how much Latin poetry of no greater merit
continues to have a certain reputation, and even now and
then to be read. The author is not a great poet ; but he
is a writer of real power both in thought and style. The
versification of his Astronomica shows a high mastery of
technique. The matter is often prosaically handled, and
often seeks relief from prosaic handling in ill-judged flights
of rhetoric ; but throughout we feel a strong and original
mind, with a large power over lucid and forcible expression.
In the prologue to the third book he rejects for himself the
common material for hexameter poems, subjects from the
Greek heroic cycle, or from Roman history. His total
want of narrative gift, as shown by the languor and flat-
ness of the elaborate episode in which he attempts to
tell the story of Perseus and Andromeda, would have been
sufficient reason for this decision; but he justifies it, in
lines of much grace and feeling, as due Jp his desire to take
a line of his own, and make a fresh if a small conquest for
Latin poetry.

Ommis ad acctssus HeUcofds semita trita est,
Ei iam eonfusi manani defontibus amnes

VI.] Manilius, 1 59

Nee capiunt haustum, turbamque ad nota ruentem :
Integra quaeramus rorantes prata per herbas
Undamque occultis meditantem murmur in antris.

In a passage of nobler and more sincere feeling, he breaks
off his catalogue of the signs of the Zodiac to vindicate
the arduous study of abstract science —

" Mulium " inquis " tenuemque tubes meferre laborem

Cernere cumfacili lucem ratione viderer,^^

Quod quaeris, Deus est Coneris scandere caelum

Fataque fatali genitus cognoscere lege

Et transire tuum pectus, mundoque potiri :

Pro pretio labor est, nee sunt immunia tanta.

Wherever one found this language used, in prose or verse,
it would be memorable. The thought is not a mere text
of the schools ; it is strongly and finely conceived, and put
in a form that anticipates the ardent and lofty manner of
Lucan, without his perpetual overstrain of expression.
Other passages, showing the same mental force, occur in
the Astronomica : one might instance the fine passage on the
power of the human eye to take in, within its tiny compass,
the whole immensity of the heavens ; or another, suggested
by the mention of the constellation Argo, on the influence
of sea-power on history, where the inevitable and well-
worn instances of Salamis and Actium receive a fresh
life from the citation of the destruction of the Athenian
fleet in the bay of Syracuse, and the great naval battles of
the first Punic war. Or again, the lines with which he opens
the fourth book, weakened as their effect is by what follows
them, a tedious enumeration of events showing the power
of destiny over human fortunes, are worthy of a great
poet : —

Quid tarn sollicitis vitam consumimus annis,
Torquemurque metu caecdque cupidine rerum ?

i6o Latin Literature. PL

Aetemisque senes curis, dum qua^rimus aevum
Perdimus, et nuHo votorumfiru beati
Victuros agimus semper, nee vivimus unquatn t

These passages have been cited from the Astronomica
because, to all but a few professional students of Latin, the
poem is practically unknown. The only other poet who
survives from the reign of Tiberius is in a very different
position, being so well known and so slight in literary
quality as to make any quotations superfluous. Phaedrus,
a Thracian freedman belonging to the household of
Augustus, published at this time the well-known collection
of Fables which, like the lyrics of the pseudo-Anacreon,
have obtained from their use as a school-book a circulation
much out of proportion to their merit. Their chief interest
is as the last survival of the urbanus sermo in Latin poetry.
They are written in iambic senarii, in the fluent and studi-
ously simple Latin of an earlier period, not without occa-
sional vulgarisms, but with a total absence of the turgid
rhetoric which was coming into fashion. The Fables are
the last utterance made by the speech of Terence: it is
singular that this intimately Roman style should have
begun and ended with two authors of servile birth and
foreign blood. But the patronage of literature was now
passing out of the hands of statesmen. Terence had moved
in the circle of the younger Scipio ; one book of the Fables
of Phaedrus is dedicated to Eutychus, the famous chariot-
driver of the Greens in the reign of Caligula. It was not
long before Phaedrus was in use as a school-book ; but his
volume was apparently regarded as hardly coming within
the province of serious literature. It is ignored by Seneca
and not mentioned by Quintilian. But we must remind
ourselves that the most celebrated works, whether in prose
or verse, do not of necessity have the widest circulation or
the largest influence. Among the poems produced in the
first ten years of this century the Original Poems of Jane

VI.] Phaedrus, i6i

and Ann Taylor are hardly if at all mentioned in handbooks
of English literature; but to thousands of readers they
were more familiar than the contemporary poems of
Wordsworth or Coleridge or even of Scott. In their
terse and pure' English, the language which is trans-
mitted from one generation to another through the con-
tinuous tradition of the nursery, they may remind us of the
Fables of Phaedrus.

The collection consists of nearly a hundred pieces. Of
these three-fourths are fables proper; being not so much
translations from the Greek of Aesop as versions of the
traditional stories, written and unwritten, which were the
common inheritance of the Aryan peoples. Mixed up with
these are a number of stories which are not strictly fables ;
five of them are about Aesop himself, and there are also
stories told of Simonides, Socrates, and Menander. Two
are from the history of his own time, one relating a grim
jest of the Emperor Tiberius, and the other a domestic
tragedy which had been for a while the talk of the town in
the previous reign. There are also, besides the prologues
and epilogues of the several books, a few pieces in which
Phaedrus speaks in his own person,* defending himself
against detractors with an acrid tone which recalls the
Terentian prologues. The collection formed the basis for
others ; but the body of fables current in the Middle Ages
seems to descend more directly from translations of a larger
Greek collection, made by Babrius in choliambic verse,
about the same time as that of Phaedrus, but probably
independently of his.

Though Livy is the single great historian of the
Augustan age, there was throughout this period a pro-
fuse production of memoirs and commentaries, as well as

* It is one of these which opens with the two sonorous lines t-

Aesopi statuam ingentem posuere Attici
Servumque aetema colhcarunt in basi^

which so powerfully affected the imagination of De Quincey.
M

1 62 Latin Literature, pt

of regular histories. Augustus wrote thirteen books of
memoirs of his own life down to the pacification of the
Empire at the close of the Cantabrian war. These are
lost ; but the Index Rerum a se Gestarum, a. brief epitome
of his career, which he composed as a sort of epitaph
on himself, is extant. This document was engraved on
plates of bronze affixed to the imperial mausoleum by
the Tiber, and copies of it were inscribed on the various
temples dedicated to him in many provincial cities after
his death. It is one of these copies, engraved on the
vestibule wall of the temple of Augustus and Rome at
Ancyra in Galatia, which still exists with inconsiderable
gaps. His two great ministers, Maecenas and Agrippa,
also composed memoirs. The most important work of
the latter hardly, however, falls within the province of
literature ; it was a commentary on the great geographical
survey of the Empire carried out under his supervision.

Gains Asinjus PolHo, already mentioned as a critic and
tragedian, was also the author of the most important
historical work of the Augustan age after Livy's. His
History of the Civil JVars, in seventeen books, from the
formation of the first triumvirate in 60 B.C. to the battle
of Philippi, was undoubtedly a work of great ability and
value. Though Pollio was a practised rhetorician, his
narrative style was simple and austere. The fine ode
addressed to him by Horace during the composition of this
history seems to hint that in Horace's opinion — or perhaps,
rather, in that of Horace's masters — Pollio would find a
truer field for his great literary ability in tragedy. But
apart from its artistic quality, the work of Pollio was of
the utmost value as giving the view held of the Civil wars
by a trained administrator of the highest rank. It was
one of the main sources used by Appian and Plutarch,
and its almost total loss is matter of deep regret.

An author of less eminence, and belonging rather to
the class of encyclopedists than of historians, is Pompeius

mmitmmfi

VI.] Trogtis and Paterculus, i63

Trogus, the descendant of a family of Narbonese Gaul,
which had for two generations enjoyed the Roman citizen-
ship. Besides works on zoology and botarfy, translated
or adapted from the Greek of Aristotle and Theophrastus,
Trogus wrote an important History of the World, exclusive
of the Roman Empire, which served as, and may have
been designed to be, a complement to that of Livy. The
original work, which extended to forty-four books, is not
extant ; but an abridgment, which was executed in the
age of the Antonines by one Marcus Junianus Justinus,
and has fortunately escaped the fate which overtook the
abridgment of Livy made about the same time, preserves the
main outlines and much of the actual form of the original.
Justin, whose individual talent was but small, had the good
sense to leave the diction of his original as far as possible
unaltered. The pure and vivacious style, and the evident
care and research which Trogus himself, or the Greek
historians whom he follows, had bestowed on the material,
make the work one of very considerable value. Its title,
Historiae Philippicae, is borrowed from that of a history
conceived on a somewhat similar plan by Theopompus,
the pupil of Isocrates, in or after the reign of Alexander
the Great ;^ and it followed Theopompus in making the
Macedonian Empire the core round which the history of
the various 'H^untries included in or bordering upon it was
arranged.' ' •'•'^*

Gaius Velleius Paterculus, a Roman officer, who after
passing with credit through high military appointments,
entered the g#neral administrative service of the Empire,
and rose to the praetorship, wrote, in the reign of Tiberius,
an abridgment of Roman history in two books, which
hardly rises beyond the mark of the military man who
dabbles in letters. The pretentiousness of his style is
partly due to the declining taste of the period, partly to
an idea of his own that he could write in the manner
of Sallust. It alternates between a sort of laboured

164 Latin Literature, pi.

sprightliness and a careless conversational manner full of
endless parentheses. Yet Velleius had two real merits;
the eye of the trained soldier for character, and an
unaffected, if not a very intelligent, interest in literature.
Where he approaches his own times, his servile attitude
towards all the members of the imperial family, and
towards Sejanus, who was still first minister to Tiberius
when the book was published, makes him almost valueless
as a historian; but in the earlier periods his observations
are often just and pointed, and he seems to have been
almost the first historian who included as an essential
part of his work some account of the more eminent
writers of his country. A still lower level of aim and
attainment is shown in another work of the same date
as that of Velleius, the nine books of historical anecdotes.
Facta et Dicta Memorabilia^ by Valerius Maximus, whose
turgid and involved style is not redeemed by any originality
of thought or treatment.

The study of archaeology, both on its linguistic and
material sides, was carried on in the Augustan age with
great vigour, though no single name is comparable to that
of Varro for extent and variety of research. One of the
most eminent and copious writers on these subjects was
Gains Julius Hyginus, a Spam'sh freed man of Augustus,
who made him principal keeper of tbe Palatine library.
He was a pupil of the Greek grammarian, Cornelius
Alexander (called Polyhistor, from his immense learning),
and an intimate acquaintance of Ovid. Of his voluminous
works on geography, history, astrology, agriculture, and
poetry, all are lost but two treatises on mythology, which
in their present form are of a much later date, and are
at best only abridged and corrupted versions, if (as many
modem critics are inclined to think) they are not wholly
the work of some author of the second or third century.
Hyginus was also one of the earliest commentators on
Virgil; he possessed among his treasures a manuscript

VI.] Celsus, 165

of the GeorgicSy which came from VirgiPs own house^
though it was not actually written by his hand ; and many
of his annotations and criticisms on the Aeneid are pre-
served by Aulus Gellius and later commentators. A little
later, in the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius, Virgilian
criticism was carried on by Quintus Remmius Palaemon
of Vicenza, the most fashionable teacher in the capital,
and the author of a famous Latin grammar on which all
subsequent ones were more or less based. Perhaps the
most distinguished of Augustan grammarians was another
celebrated teacher, Marcus Verrius Flaccus, who was
chosen by Augustus as tutor for his two grandsons, and
thenceforward held his school "in the imperial residence
on the Palatine. His lexicon, entitled De Verborum
Significatu, was ^ rich treasury of antiqttarian research :
such parts of it as survive in the abridgments made from
it in the second and eighth centuries, by Sextus Pompeius
Festus and Paulus Diaconus,^re still amoiig our^ most-
valuable sources for the study of early Latin language
and institutions. The more practical side of science in
the same period was ably represented by Aulus Cornelius
Celsus, the compiler of an encyclopedia which included
comprehensive treatises not only on oratory, jurisprudence,
and philosophy, but on the arts of war, agriculture, and
medicine. The eight books dealing with this last subject
are the only part of the work that has been preserved.
This treatise, which is written in a pure, simple, and
elegant Latin, became a standard work. It was one of
the earliest books printed in the fifteenth century, and
remained a text-book for medical students till within living
memory. Medical science had then reached, in the hands
of its leading professors, a greater perfection than it
regained till the eighteenth century. Celsus, though not,
so far as is known, the author of any important discovery
or improvement, had fulfy mastered* a branch of knowl-
edge which even then was highly complicated, and takes

i66 Latin Literature, pi.

rank by his extensive and accurate knowledge, as well
as by his rare literary skill, with the highest names in his
profession. That with his eminent medical acquirement
he should have been able to write at length on so many
other subjects as well, has long been a subject of perplexity.
The cold censure of Quintilian, who refers to him slightly
as " a man of moderate abihty," may be principally aimed
at the treatise on rhetoric, which formed a section of his
encyclopedia. Columella, writing in the next age, speaks
of him as one of the two leading authorities on agri-
culture; and he is also quoted as an authority of some
value on military tactics. Yet we cannot suppose that
the encyclopedist, however great his excellence in one
or even more subjects, would not lay himself open in
others to the censure of the specialist. It seems most
reasonable to suppose that Celsus was one of a class which
is not, after all, very uncommon — doctors of eminent knowU
edge and skill in their own art, who at the same time
are men of wide literary culture and far-ranging practical
interests.

In striking contrast to Celsus as regards width of knowl-
edge and literary skill, though no less famous in the
history of his own art, is his contemporary, the celebrated
architect Vitruvius Pollio. The ten books De Architectural
dedicated to Augustus about the year 14 B.C., are the
single important work on classical architecture which has
come down from the ancient world, and, as such, have
been the object of continuous professional study from
the Renaissance down .to the present day. But their
reputation is not due to any Uterary merit. Vitruvius,
however able as an architect, was a man of little general
knowledge, and far from handy with his pen. His style
varies between immoderate diffuseness and obscure brevity ;
sometimes he is barely intelligible, and he never writes
with grace. Where in his introductory chapters or else-
where he ventures beyond his strict province, his writing

VI.] The Elder Seneca. 167

is that of a half-educated man who has lost simplicity
without acquiring skill.

Among the innumerable rhetoricians of this age one
only requires formal notice, Lucius Annaeus Seneca' of
Cordova, the father of the famous philosopher,*^' and the
grandfather of the poet Lucan. His long life reached from
before the outbreak of war betweem Caesar and Pompeius
till after the death of Tiberius. His only extant work,
a collection of themes treated in the schools of rhetoric,
was written in his old age, after the fall of Sejanus, and
bears witness to the amazing power of memory which
he tells us himself was, when in its prime, absolutely
unique. How much of his life was spent at Rome is
uncertain. As a young man he had heard all the greatest
orators of the time except Cicero; and up to the end
of his life he could repeat word for word and without
effort whole passages, if not whole speeches, to which
he had listened many years before. His ten books of
Controversiae are only extant in a mutilated form, which
comprises thirty-five out of seventy-four themes; to these
is prefixed a single book of Suasoriae^ which is also
imperfect. The work is a mine of information for the
ihistory of rhetoric under Augustus and Tiberius, and
incidentally includes many interesting quotations, anec-
dotes, and criticisms. But we feel in reading it that we
"have passed definitely away from the Golden Age. Yet
once more " they have forgotten to speak the Latin tongue
at Rome." The Latinity of the later Empire is as distinct
from that of the Augustan age as this last is from the
Latinity of the Republic. Seneca, it is true, was not an
Italian by birth ; but it is just this influx of the provinces
into literature, which went on under the early Empire
with continually accelerating force, that determined what
type the new Latinity should take. Gaul, Spain, and
Africa are henceforth side by side with Italy, and Italy
herself sinks towards the level of a province. Within thirty

l68 Latin Literature. pi-

yeais of the death of the elder Seneca '' the iaxA secret
of empire, that Emperors could be made elsewhere than
at Rome," was discovered by the Spanish and German
legions; of hardly less moment was the other discovery,
that Latin could be written in another than the Roman
manner. In literature no less than in politics the discovery
meant the final breaking up of the old world, and the
slow birth of a new one through alternate torpors and
agonies. It might already have been said of Rome, in
the words of a poet of four hundred years later, that she
had made a city of what had been a world. But in this
absorption of the world into a single citizenship, the city
itself was ceasing to be a world of its own; and with
the self-centred urbs passed away the urbanus sermOy that
austere and noble language which was the finest flower
of her civilisation.

THE EMPIRE.

,lgglll,lm^

THE ROME OF NERO : SENECA, LUCAN, PETRONIUS.

The later years of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, while they
brought about the complete transformation of the govern-
ment into- an absolute monarchy, also laid the foundations
for that reign of the philosophers which had been dreamed
of by Plato, and which had never been so nearly realised
as it was in Rome during the second century after Christ.
The Stoical philosophy, passing beyond the limits of the
schools to become at once a religious creed and a practical
code of morals for everyday use, penetrated deeply into
the life of Rome. At first associated with the aristocratic
opposition to the imperial government, it passed through a
period of persecution which only strengthened and con-
soUdated its growth. The final struggle took place under
Domitian, whose edict of the year 94, expelling all philoso-
phers from Rome, was followed two years afterwards by his
assassination and the establishment, for upwards of eighty
years, of a government deeply imbued with the principles
of Stoicism.

Of the men who set this revolution in motion by their
writings, the earliest and the most distinguished was Lucius
Annaeus Seneca, the son of the rhetorician. Though only
of the second rank as a classic, he is a figure of very great :
importance in the history of human thought from the work
he did in the exposition of x the new creed. As a practical

171

1/2 Latin Literature. pil.

exponent of morals, he stands, with Plutarch, at the head
of all Greek and Roman writers.

The life of Seneca was one of singularly dramatic con-
trasts and vicissitudes. He was bom in the year 4 b.c., at
Cordova, where, at a somewhat advanced age, his father
had married Helvia, a lady of high birth, and brought up
in the strictest family traditions. Through the influence
of his mother's family (her sister had married Vitrasius
PoUio, who for sixteen years was viceroy of Egypt), the
way was easy to him for advancement in the public service.
But delicate health, which continued throughout his life,
kept him as a young man from taking more than a nommal
share in administrative work. He passed into the senate
through the quaestorship, and became a well-known figure
at court during the reign of Caligula. On the accession of
Claudius, he was banished to Corsica at the instance of the
Empress Messalina, on the charge of being the favoured
lover of Julia Livilla, Caligula's youngest sister. Whether
the scandal which connected his name with hers, or with
that of her sister Agrippina, had any other foundation than
the prurient gossip which raged round all the members of
the imperial family may well be doubted; but when
Agrippina married Claudius, after the downfall and execu-
tion of Messalina seven years later, she recalled him from
i^'\fi exile, obtained his nomination to the quaestorship, /and
appointed him tutor to her son Domitius Nero, then a boy
of ten. The influence gained by Seneca, an accomplished
courtier and a clever man of the world, as well as a brilliant
scholar, over his young pupil was for a long time almost
unbounded ; and when Nero became Emperor at the age of
seventeen, Seneca, in conjunction with his close friend,
Afranius Burrus, commander of the imperial guards, became*
practically the administrator of the Empire. His philosophy
was not one which rejected wealth or power ; a fortune of
three million pounds may have been amassed without
absolute dishonesty, or even forced upon him, as he pleads

I.l Seneca, 173

himself^ by the lavish generosity of his pupil ; but there can
be no doubt that in indulging the weaknesses and passions
of Nero, Seneca went far beyond the limits, not only of
honour, but of ordinary prudence. The mild and en-
lightened administration of the earlier years of the new
reign, the famous quinquennium Neronis, which was looked
back to afterwards as a sort of brief golden age, .may indeed
be ascribed largely to Seneca's influence; but this influence
was based on an excessive indulgence of Nero's caprices,
which soon worked out its own punishment. His consent
to the murder of Agrippina was the death-blow to his
influence for good, or to any self-respect that he may till
then have retained ; the death of Burrus left him without
support; and, by retiring into private life and formally
offering to make over his whole fortune to the Emperor, he
did not long delay his fate. In the year 65, on the pretext
of complicity in the conspiracy of Piso, he was commanded
to commit suicide, and obeyed with that strange mixture
of helplessness and heroism with which the orders of the
master of the world were then accepted as a sort of in-
evitable law of nature.

The philosophical writings of Seneca were extremely
voluminous ; and though a large number of them are lost,
he is still one of the bulkiest of ancient authors. They fall
into, three main groups : formal treatises on ethics ; moral
letters {epistolae morales), dealing in a less continuous way
with the same general range of subjects ; and writings on
natural philosophy, from the point of view of 'the Stoical
system. The whole of these are, however, animated by the
same spirit ; to the Stoical philosophy, physics wett merely
a branch of ethics, and a study to be pursued for the sake
of moral edification, not of reaching truth by accmrate
observation or research. The discussions of natural phe-
nomena are mere texts for religious meditations ; and
though the eight books of Naturales Quaestiones were used
as a text-book of physical science in the Middle Ages, they

tj/^ Laim. Literature, PIL.

;it9( miatUy ^Fithnnt any viennnc */aiue. So, tna, the tspoit^
)w»ki» (\i mncil lensexs, nonxinally addrngpfi ta rnriiins^
dSK ftntMtxcr^r of f^ciiy, merdv repossexic a afight ^ansakm.

CUm^iuy, On C/injuilalian^ On Pacue af JGnd^ On tkeSkart-
^f^ nf lUfe^ On Gimnf( anti iUcming Ftwaurs, wiuck are
rhi^ lYUiiiv jiiibficafire of^exiecsL^i wnttngs.

An ^ mor:d writer^ Sgneca stands deaerrndbf hfgh.
Thr>ftf|fH ittl5w,tM wirii die rhetorical vices of die sq^^ his
ffft^tfiww afft fiill of Jitriking^ and often gorgeous doqaencey
And Uv th«r combination of high thought with deep feefin^
hittr^t fa«tly, if at all, l^een siupaaaed. The Artorical
m(um<tf #a<i <io eiifumtially part of Seneca's nature, that the
irarm (t/>U'>uriAg and perpetual mannerism, of his language
d^xtK not imply any in^nncerity or want of rarnrrtnes&.
Ia iipit^ of the laboured styie, there is no fiulnre eidier in
hW'UUtf or in fbrce, and even where the rhetoric is most
pfofl<»e, it neUlom uk without a solid basis of thought, *^ It
W(aM not t^^e eajiy/' says a modem scholar, who was
himMrlf AV€t%fi to an ornament of diction, and deeply
petM^rat«:d with the spirit of Stoicism, ^to name any
u^idefn writer who has treated on morality and has said so
fwif:h that is prar.tiatlly good and true, or has treated die
matter in so attractive a way/'

(n the moral writings we have the picture of Seneca die
phitosopher ; Seneca the courtier is less attractively presented
in the curioas pamphlet called the Afocolocyniosis^ ai sStj
and ftpfteftU attack on the memory of the Emperor Claudios,
written to make the laughter of an afternoon at the court
of Nero, l^he gross bad taste of this satire is hardly
relieved by any great wit in the treatment, and the repata-
tion of the author would stand higher if it had not survived
the occasion for which it was written.

Among Seneca's extant works are also included nine
tragedies, written in imitation of the Greek, upon the wrA-
worn tubjecUi of the epic cycle. At what period of his life

I.] Seneca. 175

they were written cannot be ascertained. As a rule, only
young authors had courage enough to attempt the dis-
credited task of flogging this dead horse; but it is not
improbable that these dramas were written by Seneca in
mature life, in deference to his imperial pupiPs craze for
the stage. All the rhetorical vices of his prose are here
exaggerated. The tragedies are totally without dramatic
life, consisting merely of a series of declamatory speeches,
in correct but monotonous versification, interspersed with
choruses, which only differ from the speeches by being
written in lyric metres instead of the iambic. To say that
the tragedies are without merit would be an overstatement,,
for Seneca, though no poet, remained even in his poetry
an extremely able man of letters and an accomplished
rhetorician. His declamation comes in the same tones
from all his puppets ; but it is often grandiose, and some-
times really fine. The lines with which the curtain falls in
his Medea remind one, by their startling audacity, of Victor
Hugo in his most Titanic vein. As the only extant Latin
tragedies, these pieces had a great effect upon the early
drama of the sixteenth century in England and elsewhere.
In the well-known verses prefixed to the first folio Shake-
speare, Jonson calls on " him of Cordova dead," in the same
breath with Aeschylus and Euripides ; and long after the
Jacobean period the false tradition remained which, by
putting these lifeless copies on the same footing as their
great originals, perplexed and stultified literary criticism,
much as the criticism of classical art was confused by an
age which drew no distinction between late Graeco- Roman
sculpture and the finest work of Praxiteles or Pheidias.

By far the most brilliant poet of the Neronian age was
Seneca's nephew, Marcus Annaeus Lucanus. His father,
Annaeus Mela, the younger brother of the philosopher, is
known chiefly through his more distinguished son; an
interesting but puzzling notice in a life of Lucan speaks
of him as famous at Rome " from his pursuit of the quiet

176 Latin Literature. [in.

life." This may imply refusal of some great office when
his elder brother was practically ruler of the Empire ; what-
ever stirrings of ambition he suppressed broke out with
accumulated force in his son. Lucan's short life was one
of feverish activity. At twenty-one he made his first public
sensation by the recitation, in the theatre of Pompeius, of
a paneg3rric on Nero, who had already murdered his own
mother, but had not yet broken with the poet's uncle.
Soon afterwards, he was advanced to the quaestorship, and
a seat in the college of Augurs : but his brilliant poetical
reputation seems to have excited the jealousy of the artist-
emperor; a violent quarrel broke out between them, and
Lucan, already in theory an ardent repubhcan, became one
of the principal movers in the conspiracy of Piso. The
plan discussed among the conspirators of assassinating
Nero while in the act of singing on the stage would, no
doubt, commend itself specially to the young poet whom
the Emperor had forbidden to recite in public. When the
conspiracy was detected, Lucan's fortitude soon gave way ;
he betrayed one accomplice after another, one of the first
names he surrendered being that of his mother, Acilia.
The promise of pardon, under which his confessions were
obtained, was not kept after they were completed; and
the execution of Lucan, at the age of twenty-six, while
it cut short a remarkable poetical career, rid the world of
a very poor creature. The final effort of bravado with
which he died, declaiming a passage firom his own epic, was
small ground for Shelley to name him in the same verse with
Sydney and Chatterton.

Yet the Pharsalia, the only large work which Lucan left
complete, or all but complete, among a number of essajrs
in different styles of poetry, and the only work of his
which has been preserved, is a poem which, in spite of its
immaturity and bad taste, compels admiration by its eleva-
tion of thought and sustained brilliance of execution. Pore
rhetoric has, perhaps, never come quite so near being

mmmgm^iffmitmmm

I.] Lucan. 177

poetry ; and if the perpetual overstraining of both thought
and expression inevitably ends by fatiguing the reader,
there are at least few instances of a large work throughout
which so lofty and* grandiose a style is carried with such
elasticity and force. The Pharsalia is full of quotations,
and this itself is no small praise. Lines like Nil actum
credens dum quid superesset agendum^ or Nee sibi, sed toH
genitutn se eredere mundoy or lupiter est quodcunque vides
quocunque tnaverisy or the sad and noble

Vieturosque dei celanty ut vivere durent,
Felix esse mori-

are as well known and have sunk as deep as the great lines
of Virgil himself; and not only in single lines, but in longer
passages of lofty thought or sustained imagination, as in
his description of the dream of Pompeius, at the beginning
of the seventh book ; or the passage on the extension of the
Roman Empire, later in the same book ; or the magnificent
speech of Cato when he refuses to seek counsel of the
oracle of Ammon, Lucan sometimes touches a point
where he challenges comparison with his master. In these
passages, without anydeHcacy of modulation, with a limited
range of rhythm, his verse has a metallic clangour that stirs
the blood like a trumpet-note. But his range of ideas is
as limited as that of his rhythms ; and the thought is not
sustained by any basis of character. His fierce republi-
canism sits side by side with flattery of the reigning Emperor
more gross and servile than had till then been known at
Rome. He makes no attempt to realise his persons or to
grasp the significance of events. Caesar, Pompeius, Cato
himself — the hero of the epic — are not human beings, but
mere lay-figures round which he drapes his gorgeous rhetoric.
The Civil wars are alternately regarded as the death-agony
of freedom and as the destined channel through which the
world was led to the blessings of an uncontrolled despotism.
His ideas are borrowed indiffiprently from the Epicurean

1/8 Latin Literature. [m.

vA Stoical philosophies according to the ccxivemeiice of
the moment. Great events and actions do not kindle in
him any imaginative sympathy ; they are greedily seized as
opportunities for more and more immoderate flights of
extravagant embellishment. He ''prates of momitains ; ^
his ** phrase conjures the wandering stars, and makes them
stand like wonder-wotmded hearers ; " freedom, virtue, &te,
the sea and the sim, gods and men before whom the gods
themselves stand abased, hurtle through the poem in a con-
fused thunder of sonorous phrase. Such brilliance, in the
exact manner that was then most admired, dazzled his
contemporaries and retained a permanent influence over
later poets. Statius, himself an author of far higher poetical
gifts, speaks of him in terms of almost extravagant admira-
tion ; with a more balanced judgment Quintilian sums him
up in words which may be taken as on the whole the final
criticism adopted by the world; ardens et condtatus et
sententiis clarissimus, et, ui dicam quod sentio, magis oratari-
bus quam poetis imitandus.

One of Lucan's intimate friends was a young man of
high family, Aulus Persius Flaccus of Volaterrae in Etruria,
a near relation of the celebrated Arria, wife of Paetus.
Through his kinswoman he was early introduced to the
circle of earnest thinkers and moralists among whom the
higher life was kept up at Rome amid the corruption of
the Neronian age. The gentle and delicate boy won the
hearts of all who knew him. When he died, at the age of
twenty-eight, a little book of six satires, which he had
written with much effort and at long intervals, was retouched
by his master, the Stoic philosopher Comutus, and published
by another friend, Caesius Bassus, himself a poet of some
reputation. Several other writings which Persius left were
destroyed by the advice of Comutus. The six pieces —
only between six and seven hundred lines in all — were at
once recognised as showing a refined and uncommon
literary gift. Persius, we are informed, had no admiration

MMtaii

I.] Persitis, 179

for the genius of Seneca ; and, indeed, no two styles, though
both are deeply artificial, could be more unlike one another.
With all his moral elevation, Seneca was a courtier, an
opportunist, a man * of the world : Stoicism took a very
different colour in the boy " of maidenly modesty," as his
biographer tells us, who lived in a household of devoted
female relations, and only knew the world as a remote
spectator. Though within the narrow field of his own
experience he shows keen observation and delicate power
of portraiture, the world that he knows is mainly one of
books ; his perpetual imitations of Horace are fcot so much
plagiarisms as the unaffected outcome of the mind of a
very young student, to whom the Satires of Horace were
more familiar than the Rome of his own day. So, too,
the involved and obscure style which has made him the
paradise of commentators is less a deliberate literary
artifice than the natural effect of looking at everything
through a literary medium, and choosing phrases, not for
their own fitness, but for the associations they recall. His
deep moral earnestness, his gentleness of nature, and, it
must be added, his want of humour, made him a favoiTrite
author beyond the circles which were merely attracted by
his verbal obscurities and the way in which he locks up
his meaning in hints and allusions. His unquestionable
dramatic power might, in later life, have ripened into really
great achievement ; as it is, he lives to us chiefly in the few
beautiful passages where he slips into being natural, and
draws, with a grace and charm that are strikingly absent
from the rest of his writing, the picture of his own quiet
life as a student, and of the awakening of his moral and
intellectual nature at the touch of philosophy.

Lucan and Persius represent the effect which Roman
Stoicism had on two natures of equal sensibility but widely
different quality and taste. Among the many other pro-
fessors or adherents of the Stoic school in the age of Nero,
a considerable number were also authors, but the habit of

l8o Latin Literature. pll.

writing in Greek, which a hundred years later grew to such
^proportions as to threaten the continued existence of Latin
literature, had already taken root. The three most dis-
tinguished representatives of the stricter Stoicism, Comutus,
Quintus Sextius, and Gains Musonius Rufiis (the first and
last of whom were exiled by Nero) wrote on philosophy
in Greek, though they seem to have written in Latin on
other subjects. Musonius was, indeed, hardly more Roman
than his own most illustrious pupil, the Phrygian Epictetus.
Stoicism, as they understood it, left no room for nationality,
and little for writing as a fine art.

This growing prevalence of Greek at Rome combined
with political reasons to check the production of important
prose works. History more especially languished under
the jealous censorship of the government. The only im-
portant historical work of the period is one of which the
subject could hardly excite suspicion, the Life of Alexander
the Greaty by Quintus Curtius Rufus. The precise date is
uncertain, and different theories have assiciied it to an
earlier or later period in the reign of Augustus or of(yespasian^
The subject is one which hardly any degree of dulness in
the writer could make wholly uninteresting. But the clear
and orderly narrative of Curtius, written in f style studied
from that of Livy, but kept within simpler limits, has real
merit of its own; and against his imperfect technical
knowledge of campaigns and battles must be set the pains
he took to consult the best Greek authorities.

Memoirs were written in the Neronian age by numbers
both of men and women. Those of Ihe Empress Agrippina
were used by Tacitus ; and we have references to others by
the two great Roman generals of the period, Suetonius Pau-
linus and Domitius Corbulo. The production of scientific
or technical treatises, which had been so profuse in the
preceding generation, still went on. Only two of any im-
portance are extant; one of these, the Chorographia of
Pomponius Mela, a geographical manual based on the

1.] Columella. i8i

best authorities and embellished with descriptions of places,
peoples, and customs, is valuable as the earliest and one of
the most complete systems of ancient geography which
we possess ; but in literary merit it falls far short of the
other, the elaborate work on agriculture by Lucius Junius
Moderatus Columella. Both Mela and Columella were
natives of Spain, and thus belong to the Spanish school
of Latin authors, which begins with the Senecas and is
continued later by Martial and Quintilian. But while Mela,
in his style, followed the new fashion. Columella, an
enthusiast for antiquity and a warm admirer of the Augustan
writers, reverts to the more classical manner, which a little
later became once more predominant in the writers of the
Flavian period. His simple and dignified style is much above
the level of a mere technical treatise. His prose, indeed,
may be read with more pleasure than the verse ui which,
by a singular caprice, one of the twelve books is composed.
In one of the most beautiful episodes of the Georgicsy
Virgil had briefly touched on the subject of gardening, and
left it to be treated by others who might come after him :
praetereo atque aliis post me memoranda reltnquo. At the
instance, he says, of friends. Columella attempts to fill up
the gap by a fifth Georgic on horticulture. He approaches
the task so modestly, and carries it out so simply, that
critics are not inclined to be very severe ; but he was no
poet, and the book is little more than a cento from Virgil,
carefully and smoothly written, and hardly if at all disfigured
by pretentiousness or rhetorical conceits.

The same return upon the Virgilian manner is shown in
the seven Eclogues, composed in the early years of Nero's
reign, by Titus Calpumius Siculus. These are remarkable
rather as the only specimens for nearly three hundred
years of a direct attempt to continue the manner of VirgiPs
Bucolics than for any substantive merit of their own. That
manner, indeed, is so exceptionally tmmanageable that it
is hardly surprising that it should have been passed over

1 82 Latin Literature. [III.

by later poets of high original gift; but that even poets
of the second and third rate should hardly ever have
attempted to imitate poems which stood in the very first
rank of fame bears striking testimony to Virgil's singular
quality of unapproachableness. The Eclogues of Calpumius
(six of them are Eclogues within the ordinary meaning, the
seventh rather a brief Georgic on the care of sheep and
goats, made formally a pastoral by being put into the mouth
of an old shepherd sitting in the shade at midday) are,
notwithstanding their almost servile imitation of Virgil^
written in such graceful verse, and with so few serious lapses
of taste, that they may be read with considerable pleasure.
The picture, in the sixth Eclogue, of the fawn lying among;^
the white lilies, will recall to English readers one of the
prettiest fancies of Marvell ; that in the second, of Flora
scattering her tresses over the spring meadow, and Pomona
playing under the orchard boughs, is at least a vivid
pictorial presentment of a sufficiently well-worn theme. A
more normal specimen of Calpumius' manner may be
instanced in the lines (v. 52-62) where one of the most
beautiful passages in the third Georgic^ the description of
a long summer day among the Italian hill-pastures, is
simply copied in different words.

The didactic poem on volcanoes, called Aetna^ probably
written by the Lucilius to whom Seneca addressed his
writings on natural philosophy, belongs to the same period
and shows the same influences. Of the other minor poetical
works of the time the only one which requires special
mention is the tragedy of Octavia^ which is written in
the same style as those of Seneca, and was long included
among his works. Its only interest is as the single extant
specimen of the fabula praetexta, or drama with a Roman
subject and characters. The characters here include Nero
and Seneca himself. But the treatment is as conventional
and declamatory as that of the mythological tragedies
among which it has been preserved, and the result, if
possible, even flatter and more tedious*

I.] Petronius, 183

One other work of extreme and unique interest survives
from the reign of Nero, the fragments of a novel by
Petronius Arbiter, one of the Emperor*s intimate circle in
the excesses of his later years. In the year 66 he fell a
victim to the jealousy of the infamous and all but omnipotent
Tigellinus; and on this occasion Tacitus sketches his life
and character in a few of his strong masterly touches.
' " His days were passed," says Tacitus, " in sleep, his nights
in the duties or pleasures of life ; where others toiled for
fame he had lounged into it, and he had the reputation not,
like most members of that profligate society, of a dissolute
wanton, but of a trained master in luxury. A sort of
careless ease, an entire absence of self-consciousness, added
the charm of complete simplicity to all he said and did.
Yet, as governor of Bithynia, and afterwards as ' consul, he
showed himself a vigorous and capable administrator ; then
relapsing into the habit of assuming the mask of vice, he
was adopted as Arbiter of Elegance into the small circle of
Nero's intimate companions ; no luxury was charming or
refined till Petronius had given it his approval, and the
jealousy of Tigellinus was roused against a rival and master
in the science of debauchery."

The novel written by this remarkable man was in the
form of an autobiography narrating the adventures, in
various Italian towns, of a Greek freedman. The fragments
hardly enable us to trace any regular plot; its interest
probably lay chiefly in the series of vivid pictures which it
presented of life among all orders of society from the
highest \o the lowest, and its accurate reproduction of
popular language and manners. The hero of the story uses
the ordinary Latin speech of educated persons, though,
from the nature of the work, the style is much more colloquial
than that of the formal prose used for serious writing. But
the conversation of many of the characters is in the pkbeius
sermOy the actual speech of the lower orders, of which so
little survives in literature. It is full of solecisms and

184 Latin Literature. [III.

popular slang ; and where the scene lies, as it mostly does in
the extant fragments, in the semi-Greek seaports of Southern
Italy, it passes into what was almost a dialect of its own,
the lingua franca of the Mediterranean under the Empire,
A dialect of mixed Latin and Greek. The longest and
most important fragment is the well-known Supper of
Trimalchio, It is the description, full of brilliant wit, of
a dinner-party given by a sort of Golden Dustman and
nis wife, people of low birth and little education, who
had come into an enormous fortune. Trimalchio, a figure
drawn with extraordinary life, is constantly making himself
ridiculous by his blunders and affectations, while he almost
wins our liking by his childlike simplicity and good nature.
The dinner itself, and the conversation on literature and
art that goes on at the dinner-table, are conceived in a
spirit of the wildest humour. Trimalchio, who has two
libraries, besides everything else handsome about him, is
anxious to air his erudition. " Can you tell us a story," he
aaka a guest, " of the twelve sorrows of Hercules, or how
the Cyclops pulled Ulysses* leg? I used to read them in
Homer when I was a boy." After an interruption, caused
by the entrance of a boar, roasted whole and stuffed with
sausages, he goes on to talk of his collection of plate ; his
unique cups of Corinthian bronze (so called firom a dealer
named Corinthus ; the metal was invented by Hannibal at
the capture of Troy), and his huge silver vases, " a hundred
of them, more or less,** chased with the story of Daedahis
shutting Niobe into the Trojan horse, and Cassandra killiDg
her sons — "the dead children so good, you would think
they were aUve ; for I sell my knowledge in matters of art
fwr no money.** Presently there follow the two wonderful
ghost stories — that of the wer-wolfi told by one of the guests^
and that of the witches by Trimalchio himself in return— ;-
both masterpieces of vivid realism. As the evening advances
the fun becomes more ^t and furious^ The cook,, who
li^ excelled himself in the ingaiuity c^ his dishes^ is called

I.] Petronius. 185

up to take a seat at table, and after favouring the company
with an imitation of a popular tragedian, begins to make
/t^ book with Trimalchio over the next chariot races,
"^ortunata, Trimalchio's wife, is a little in liquor, and gets
p to dance. Just at this point Trimalchio suddenly turns
sentimental, and, after giving elaborate directions for his
own obsequies, begins to cry. The whole company are in
tears round him when he suddenly rallies, and proposes
that, as death is certain, they shall all go and have a hot
bath. In the little confusion that follows, the narrator and
his friend slip quietly away. This scene of exquisite fooling
is quite unique in Greek or Latin literature : the breadth
and sureness of touch are almost Shakespearian. Another
fragment relates the famous story of the Matron of Ephesus^
one of the popular tales which can be traced back to India,
but which appears here for the first time in the Western
world. Others deal with literary criticism, and ' include
passages in verse ; the longest of these, part of an epic on
the civil wars in the manner of Lucan, is recited by one
of the principal characters, the professional poet Eumolpus,
to exemplify the rules he has laid down for epic poetry in
a most curious discussion that precedes it. That so small
a part of the novel has been preserved is deeply to be
regretted; it must have been comparable, in dramatic
power and (notwithstanding the gross indecency of many
passages) in a certain large sanity, to the great work of
Fielding. In all the refined writing of the next age we
never again come on anything at once so masterly and
so human.

11.

THE SILVER AGE: STATIUS, THE ELDER PLINY, MARTIAL^
% QUINTIUAN.

To the age of the rhetoricians succeeded the age of the
scholars. Quintilian, PUny, and Statius, the three foremost
authors of the Flavian dyna sty, have common qualities of
great learning and sober judgment which give them a
certain mutual affinity, and divide them sharply from their
immediate predecessors. The effort to outdo the Augustan
writers had exhausted itself; the new school rather aimed
at reproducing their manner. In the hands of inferior
writers this attempt only issued in tame imitations; but
with those of really original power it carried the Latin of
the Silver Age to a point higher in quality than it ever
reached, except in the single case of Tacitus, a writer of
unique genius who stands in a class of his own.

The reigns of the three Flavian emperors nearly occupy
the last thirty years of the first ceiitury after Christ. The
" year of four Emperors " which passed between the down-
fall of Nero and the accession of Vespasian had shaken
the whole Empire to its foundations. The recovery from
that shock left the Roman world established on a new
footing. In literature, no less than in government and
finance, a feverish period of inflated credit had brought it
to the verge of ruin. At the beginning of his reign
Vespasian announced a deficit of four hundred million
pounds (a sum the like of which had never been heard of

II.] Statins. 187

before) in the public exchequer; some similar estimate
might have been formed by a fanciful analogy of the
collapse that had to be made good in literature, when style
could no longer bear the tremendous overdrafts made on
it by Seneca and Lucan. And in the literary as in the
political world there was no complete recovery : throughout
the second century we have to trace the gradual decline of
letters going on alongside of that mysterious decay of the
Empire itself before which a continuously admirable govern-
ment was all but helpless.

Publius Papinius Statius, the most eminent of the poets
of this age, was bom towards the end of the reign of
Tiberius, and seems to have died before the accession of
Nerva. His poetry can all be assigned to the reign of Domi-
tian, or the few years immediately preceding it. As to his
life little is known, probably because it passed without
much incident. He was bom at Naples, and retumed to
it in advanced age after the completion of his Thebaid ;
but the greater part of his life was spent at Rome, where
his father was a grammarian of some distinction who had
acted for a time as tutor to Domitian. He had thus access
to the court, where he improved his opportunities by un-
stinted adulation of the Emperor and his favourite eunuch
Earinus. The curious mediaeval tradition of his conversion
to Christianity, which is so finely used by Dante in the
PurgatoriOy cannot be traced to its origin, and does not
appear to have any historical foundation.

Twelve years were spent by Statius over his epic poem
on the War of Thebes, which was published about the year
92, with a florid dedication to Domitian. After its com-
pletion he began another epic, on an even more imposing
scale, on the Hfe of Achilles and the whole of the Trojan
war. Of this Achilleid only the first and part of the
second book were ever completed ; had it continued on
the same scale it would have been the longest of Greek or
Latin epics. At various times after the publication of the

1 88 Latin Literature, [III.

Thebaid appeared the five books of SHvae, miscellaneous
and occasional poems on different subjects, often of a
personal nature. Another epic, on the campaign of Domi-
tian in Germany, has not been preserved.

The Thebaid became very famous; later poets, like
Ausonius or Claudian, constantly imitate it. Its smooth
versification, copious diction, and sustained elegance made
it a sort of canon of poetical technique. But, itself, it rises
beyond the merely mechanical level. Without any quality
that can quite be called genius. Statins had real poetical
feeling. His taste preserves him from any great extrava-
gances ; and among much tedious rhetoric and cumbrous
mythology, there is enough of imagination and pathos to
make the poem interesting and even charming. At a time
when Guercino and the Caracci were counted great masters
in the sister art, the Thebaid was also held to be a master-
piece. Besides complete versions by inferior hands, both
Pope and Gray took the pains to translate portions of it
into English verse, and it is perpetually quoted in the
literature of the eighteenth century. It is, indeed, perhaps
its severest condemnation that it reads best in quotations.
Not only the more highly elaborated passages, but almost
any passage taken at random, may be read with pleasure
and admiration ; those who have had the patience to read
it through, however much they may respect the continuous
excellence of its workmanship, will (as Mrith the Gierusa-
lemme Liberata of Tasso) feel nearly as much respect for
their own achievement as for that of the^poet..

The Silvaey consisting as they do of comparatively short
pieces, display the excellences of Statius to greater advan-
tage. Of the thirty-two poems, six are in l)Tic metres,
the rest being all written in the smooth graceful hexameters
of which the author of the Thebaid was so accomplished
a master. The subjects, for the most part of a familiar
nature, are very various. A touching and affectionate poem
to his wife Claudia is one of the best known. Several

II.] Statins, 189

are on the death of friends ; one of very great beauty is
on the marriage of his brother poet, Arruntius Stella, to a
lady with the beautiful name of Violantilla. The descriptive
pieces on the villas of acquaintances at Tivoli and Sorrento,
and on the garden of another in Rome, are full of a genuine
feeling for natural beauty. The poem on the death of
his father, though it has passages of romantic fancy, is
deformed by an excess of literary allusions; but that on
the death of. his adopted son (he had noKchildren.j^^-his'
jown), which ends the collection, is very touching in the
sincerity of its grief and its reminiscences of the dead boy's
infancy. Perhaps the finest, certainly the most remarkable
of all these pieces is the short poem (one might almost call
it a sonnet) addressed to Sleep. This, though included in
the last book of the Siivae, must have been written in
earlier life; it shows that had Statins not been entangled
in the composition of epics by the conventional taste of his
age, he might have struck out a new manner in ancient
poetry. The poem is so brief that it may be quoted in
fuU: —

Crimine quo merui iuveniSy placidissime dtvonty
Quove errore misery donis ut solus egerem,
Somney tuisf Tacet omne pecus, volucresque^feraequey
Et simulant fessos curvata cacumina somnos;
Nee trucibus fluviis idem sonus ; occidit horror
AequoriSy et terns maria inclinata quiescunt
Septima iam rediens Phoebe mihi respicit aegras
Stare genas, totidem Oeteae Paphiaeque revisunt
LampadeSj et toties nostros Tithonia questus
PraeteHt et gelido spargit miserata flagello,
Unde ego sufficiam ? Non si mihi luminh milk
Quae sacer alterna tantum statione tenebat
Argus y et haud unquam vigilabat corpore toto.
At nunCy heu, altquis longa sub nocte pueUae
Brachia nexa tenenSy ultro te, SomtUy repellit:

igo Latin Literature, pll.

Inde vent : nee te totas infundere pennas
Luminibus compello meis : hoc turba precatur
Laetior; extremae me tange cacumine virgae,
Sufficitj aut Uviter suspense poplite transi.

Were the three lines beginning Unde ego sufficiam struck
out — and one might almost fancy them to have been in-
serted later by an unhappy second thought — the remainder
of this poem would be as perfect as it is unique. The
famous sonnet of Wordsworth on the same subject must
at once occur to an English reader; but the poem in its
manner, especially in the d)ring cadence of the last two
lines, recalls even more strongly some of the finest sonnets
of Keats. " Had Statins written often thus," in the words
Johnson uses of Gray, "it had been vain to blame, and
useless to praise him."

The two other epic poets contemporary with Statius
whose works are extant, Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus,
belong generally to the same school, but stand on a much
lower level of excellence. The former is only known as
the author of the Argonautica, An allusion in the proem
of his epic to the recent destruction of Jerusalem by Titus
in the year 70, and another in a later book to the great
eruption of Vesuvius in 79, fix the date of the poem ; and
Quintilian, writing in the later years of Domitian, refers to
the poet's recent death. From another passage in the
Argonautica it has been inferred that Flaccus was one of
the college of quindecemvirs, and therefore of high family.
The Argonautica follows the well-known poem of Apollonius
Rhodius, but by his diffuse rhetorical treatment the author
expands the story to such a length that in between five and
six thousand lines he has only got as far as the escape of
Jason and Medea from Colchos. Here the poem breaks
off abruptly in the eighth book ; it was probably meant to
consist of twelve, and to end with the return of the Argo-
nauts to Greece. In all respects, except the choice of

^ ' -wiifciitMaJ^

II.] Silius Ttalicus, 191

subject, Valerius Flaccus is far inferior to Statius. He
cannot indeed wholly destroy the perennial charm of the
story of the Golden Fleece, but he comes as near doing so
as is reasonably possible. His versification is correct, but
without freedom or variety; and incidents and persons
are alike presented through a cloud of monotonous and
mechanical rhetoric.

If Valerius Flaccus to some degree redeemed his imagi-
native poverty by the choice of his subject, the other epic
poet of the Flavian era, Tiberius Catius Silius Italicus,
chose a subject which no ingenuity could have adapted to
epic treatment. His Punic War may fairly contend for
the distinction of being the worst epic ever written; and
its author is the most striking example in Latin literature
of the incorrigible amateur. He had, in earlier hfe, passed
through a distinguished official career; he was consul the
year before the fall of Nero, and in the political revolutions
which followed conducted himself with such prudence that,
through an intimate friend of Vitellius, he remained in
favour under Vespasian. After a term of further service as
proconsul of Asia, he retired to a dignified and easy leisure.
His love of literature was sincere ; he prided himself on
owning one of Cicero*s villas, and the land which held
VirgiPs grave, and he was a generous patron to men of
letters. The fiilsome compliments paid to him by Martial
(who has the effrontery to speak of him as a combined
Virgil and Cicero) are, no doubt, only an average specimen
of the atmosphere which surrounded so munificent a patron ;
but the admiration which he openly expressed for the slave
Epictetus does him a truer honour. The Bellum Punicum,
in seventeen books, is longer than the Odyssey. It closely
follows the history as told by Livy; but the elements of
almost epic grandeur in the contest between Rome and
Hannibal all disappear amid masses of tedious machinery.
Without any invention or constructive power of his own,
Silius copies with tasteless pedantry all the outworn traditions

192 Latin Literature, [III.

of the heroic epic. What Homer or Virgil has done, he
must needs do too. The Romans are the Dardanians or
the Aeneadae : Juno interferes in Hannibal's favour, and
Venus, hidden in a cloud, watches the battle of the Trebia
from a hill. Hannibal is urged to war by a dream like that
of Agamemnon in the Iliad ; he is equipped with a spear
" fatal to many thousands " of the enemy, and a shield, like
that of Aeneas, embossed with subjects from Carthaginian
history, and with the river Ebro flowing round the edge
as an ingenious variant of the Ocean-river on the shield
of Achilles. A Carthaginian fleet cruising off the coast of
Italy falls in with Proteus, who takes the opportunity of
prophesying the course of the war. Hannibal at Zama
pursues a. phantom of Scipio, which flies before him and
disappear^ like that of Aeneas before Tumus. Such was
the degradation to which the noble epic machinery had
now sunk. Soon after the death of Silius the poem seems
to have fallen into merited oblivion; there is a single
reference to it in a poet of the fifth century, and thereafter
it remained unknown or unheard of until a manuscript
discovered by Poggio Bracciolini brought it to light again
early in the fifteenth century.

The works of the other Flavian poets, Curiatius Matemus,
Saleius Bassus, Arruntius Stella, and the poetess Sulpicia,
are lost ; all else that survives of the verse of the period
is the work of a writer of a different order, but of consider-
able importance and value, the epigrammatist Martial. By
no means a poet of the first rank, hardly perhaps a poet
at all according to any strict definition, he has yet a genius
of his own which for many ages made him the chief and
almost the sole model for a particular kind of literature.

Marcus Valerius Martialis was born at Augusta Bilbilis
in Central Spain towards the end of the reign of Tiberius.
He came to Rome as a young man during the reign of
Nero, when his countrymen, Seneca and Lucan, were at
the height of their reputation. Through their patronage

imlUrmttmi^mi

II.] Martial. 193

he obtained a footing, if not at court, yet among the
wealthy amateurs who extended a less dangerous protection
to men of letters. For some thirty-five years he led the
life of a dependant; under Domitian his assiduous flattery
gained for him the honorary tribunate which conferred
equestrian rank, though not the rewards of hard cash which
he would probably have appreciated more. The younger
Pliny, who speaks of him with a sHghtly supercilious
approval, repaid with a more substantial gratification a
poem comparing him to Cicero. Martial's gift for occasional
verse just enabled him to live up three pair of stairs in the
city ; in later years, when he had an income from booksellers
as well as from private patrons, he could afford a tiny
country house among the Sabine hills. Early in the reign
of Domitian he began to publish regularly, bringing out a
volume of epigrams every year. After the accession of
Trajan he returned to his native town, from which,
however, he continued to send fresh volumes of epigrams
to his Roman publishers. There his talent for flattery at
last bore substantial fruit ; a rich lady of the neighbourhood
presented him with a little estate, and though the longing
for the country, which had grown on him in Rome, was
soon replaced by a stronger feeling of regret for the
excitement of the capital, he spent the remainder of his life
in material comfort.

The collected works of Martial, as published after his
death, which probably took place about the year 102,
consist of twelve books of miscellaneous Epigrams^ which
are prefaced by a book of pieces called Liber Spectaculorum,
upon the performances given by Titus and Domitian in the
capital, especially in the vast amphitheatre erected by the
former. At the end are added two books of Xenia and
Apophoreta, distichs written to go with the Christmas presents
of all sorts which were interchanged at the festival of the
Saturnalia. These last are, of course, not " distinguished for
a strong poetic feeling," any more than the cracker mottoes

194 Latin LiteraUire. [III.

of modern times. But the twelve books of Epigrams ^ while
they include work of all degrees of goodness and badness,
yj are invaluable from the vivid picture which they give of
actual daily life at Rome in the first century. Few writers
of equal ability show in their work such a total absence of
character, such indifference to all ideas or enthusiasms;
yet this very quality makes the verse of Martial a more
perfect mirror of the external aspects of Roman life. A
certain intolerance of hypocrisy is the nearest approach
Martial ever makes to moral feeling. His perpetual flattery
of Domitian, though gross as a mountain — it generally takes
the form of comparing him with the Supreme Being, to the
disadvantage of the latter — has no more serious political
import than there is serious moral import in the almost
unexampled indecency of a large proportion of the epigrams.
The " candour " noted in him by Pliny is simply that of
a sheet of paper which is indifferent to what is written upon
it, fair or foul. He may claim the merit — nor is it an
inconsiderable one — of being totally free from pretence.
In one of the most graceful of his poems, he enumerates
to a friend the things which make up a happy life : " Be
yourself, and do not wish to be something else," is the line
which sums up his counsel. To his own work he extends
the same easy tolerance with which he views the follies and
vices of society. " A few good, some indifferent, the greater
number bad " — so he describes his epigrams ; what opening
is left after this for hostile criticism ? If elsewhere he hints
that only indolence prevented him from producing more
important work, so harmless an affectation may be passed
over in a writer whose clearness of observation and mastery
of slight but lifelike portraiture are really of a high order.

By one of the curious accidents of literary history
Martial, as the only Latin epigrammatist who left a large
mass of work, gave a meaning to the word epigram from
which it is only now beginning to recover. The art,
practised with such infinite grace by Greek artists of almost

dMlriHHMllHlMl

II.] The Elder Pliny, 195

every age between Solon and Justinian, was just at this
period sunk to a low ebb. The contemporary Greek
epigrammatists whose work is preserved in the Palatine
Anthology, from Nicarchus and Lucilius to Strato, all show
the same heavinessjof Jiandhng and the same tiresome
insistence on making a point, which prevent Martial's
epigrams from being placed in the first rank. But while in
any collection of Greek epigrammatic poetry these authors
naturally sink to their own place. Martial, as well by the
mere mass of his work — some twelve hundred pieces in all,
exclusive of the cracker mottoes — as by his animation and
pungent wit, set a narrow and rather disastrous type for
later literature. He appealed strongly to all that was worst
in Roman taste — its heavy-handedness, its admiration of
verbal cleverness, its tendency towards brutality. Half a
century later, Verus Caesar, that wretched creature whom
Hadrian had adopted as his successor, and whose fortunate
death left the Empire to the noble rule of Antoninus Pius,
called Martial " his Virgil : " the incident is highly significant
of the corruption of taste which in the course of the second
century concurred with other causes to bring Latin literature
to decay and almost to extinction. ^^c^,,,,^

Among the learned Romans of this age of great learning,
the elder Pliny, aetatis suae doctissimuSy easily took the first
place. Bom in the middle of the reign of Tiberius, Gains
Plinius Secundus of Comum passed his life in high public
employments, both military and civil, which took him
successively over nearly all the provinces of the Empire.
He served in Germany, in the Danubian provinces, in
Spain, in Gaul, in Africa, and probably also in Syria, on
the staff of Titus, during the Jewish war. In August of
the year 79 he was in command of the fleet stationed at
Misenum when the memorable eruption of Vesuvius took
place. In his zeal for scientific investigation he set sail for
the spot in a man-of-war, and, lingering too near the zone
of the eruption, was suffocated by the rain of hot ashes.

196 Latin Literature, [III.

The account of his death, given by his nephew in a letter
to the historian Tacitus, is one of the best known passages
in the classics.

By amazing industry and a most rigid economy of time,
Pliny combined with his continuous official duties an
immense reading and a Uterary production of great scope
and value. A hundred and sixty volumes of his extracts
from writers of all kinds, written, we are told, on both sides
of the paper in an extremely small hand, were bequeathed
by him to his nephew. Besides works on grammar, rhetoric,
military tactics, and other subjects, he wrote two important
histories — one, in twenty books, on the wars on the German
frontier, the other a general history of Rome in thirty-one
books, from the accession of Nero to the joint triumph of
Vespasian and Titus after the subjugation of the Jewish
revolt. Both these valuable works are completely lost,
nor is it possible to determine how far their substance
reappears in Tacitus and Suetonius ; the former, however,
in both Annals and HistorieSy repeatedly cites him as an
authority. But we fortunately possess the most important
of his works, the thurty-seven books of his Natural History.
This is not, indeed, a great work of literature, though its
style, while sometimes heavy and sometimes mannered, is
on the whole plain, straightforward, and unpretentious;
but it is a priceless storehouse of information on every
branch of natural science as known to the ancient world.
It was published with a dedication to Titus two years before
Pliny's death, but continued during the rest of his life to
receive his additions and corrections. It was compiled
from a vast reading. Nearly five hundred authors (about
a hundred and fifty Roman, the rest foreign) are cited in
his catalogue of authorities. The plan of this great
encyclopedia was carefully thought out before its composition
was begun. It opens with a general system of physiography,
and then passes successively to geography, anthropology,
human physiology, zoology and comparative physiology.

^IJHI^IIgl

II.] The Elder Pliny, 197

botany, including agriculture and horticulture, medicine,
mineralogy, and the fine arts.

After being long held as an almost infallible authority,
Pliny, in more recent times, fell under the reproach of
credulity and want of sufficient discrimination in the value
of his sources. Further research has gone far to reinstate
his reputation. Without having any profound original
knowledge of the particular sciences, he had a naturally
scientific mind. His tendency to give what is merely
curious the same attention as what is essentially important,
has incidentally preserved much valuable detail, especially
as regards the arts; and modem research often tends to
confirm the anecdotes which were once condemned as
plainly erroneous and even absurd. Pliny has, further, the
great advantage of being shut up in no philosophical
system. His philosophy of life, and his religion so far as
it appears, is that of his age, a moderate and rational
Stoicism. Like his contemporaries, he complains of the
modern falling away from nature and the decay of morals.
But it is as the conscientious student and the candid
* observer that he habitually appears. In diligence, accuracy,
and freedom from preconception or prejudice, he represents
the highest level reached by ancient science after Aristotle
and his immediate successors.

Of the more specialised scientific treatises belonging to
this period, only two are extant, the three books on Strategy
by Sextus Julius Frontinus, and a treatise by the same
author on the public water-supply of Rome ; both belong
to strict science, rather than to literature. The schools of
rhetoric and grammar continued to flourish : among many
imimportant names that of Quintilian stands eminent, as
not only a grammarian and rhetorician, but a fine critic
and a writer of high substantive value.

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus of Calagurris, a small town
on the Upper Ebro, is the last, and perhaps the most dis-
tinguished of that school of Spanish writers which bulks

198 Latin Literature. [III.

so largely in the history of the first century. He was
educated at Rome, and afterwards returned to his native
town as a teacher of rhetoric. There he made, or improved,
the acquaintance of Servius Sulpicius Galba, proconsul of
Tarraconensian Spain in the later years of Nero. When
Galba was declared Emperor by the senate, he took
Quintilian with him to Rome. There he was appointed
a public teacher of rhetoric, with a salary from the privy
purse. He retained his fame and his favour through the
succeeding reigns. Domitian made him tutor to the two
grand-nephews whom he destined for his own successors,
and raised him to consular rank. For about twenty years
he remained the most celebrated teacher in the capital,
combining his professorship with a large amount of actual
pleading in the law-courts. His published works belong
to the later years of his life, when he had retired from the
bar and from public teaching. His first important treatise,
on the decay of oratory, De Causis Corruptae Eloquentiae^
is not extant. It was followed, a few years later, in or
about the year 93, by his great work, the Institutio Oratoria,
which sums up the teaching and criticism of his life.

The contents of this work, which at once became the
final and standard treatise on the theory and practice of
Latin oratory, are very elaborate and complete. In the
first book, Quintilian discusses the preliminary training
required before the pupil is ready to enter on the study of
his art, beginning with a sketch of the elementary education
of the child from the time he leaves the nursery, which is
even now of remarkable interest. The second book deals
with the general principles and scope of the art of oratory,
and continues the discussion of the aims and methods of
education in its later stages. The five books from the
third to the seventh are occupied with an exhaustive
treatment of the matter of oratory, under the heads of what
were known to the Roman schools by the names of invention
and disposition* The greater part of these books is, pf

II.] Quintilian. 199

course, highly technical. The next four books, from the
eighth to the eleventh, treat of the manner of oratory, or
all that is included in the word style in its widest significa-
tion. It is in this part of the treatise that Quintilian, in
relation to the course of general reading both in Greek and
Latin that should be pursued by the young orator, gives
the masterly sketch of Latin literature which is the most ^'^-
famous portion of the whole work. The twelfth book,
which concludes the work, reverts to education in the
highest and most extended sense, that of the moral quali-
fications of the great orator, and the exhaustive discipline
of the whole nature throughout life which must be con-
tinued unfalteringly to the end.

Now that the formal study of rhetoric has ceased to be
a part of the higher education, the more strictly technical
parts of Quintilian's work, like those of the Rhetoric of
Aristotle, have, in a great measure, lost their relevance to
actual life, and with it their general interest to the world
at large. Both the Greek and the Roman masterpiece are
read now rather for their incidental observations upon
human nature and the fundamental principles of art, than
for instruction in a particular form of art which, in the
course of time, has become obsolete. These observations,
in Quintilian no less than in Aristotle, are often both
luminous and profound. A collection of the memorable
sentences of Quintilian, such as has been made by his
modem editors, is full of sayings of deep wisdom and
enduring value. Nulla mansit ars qualis inventa est^ nee
intra initium stetit; Plerumque facilius est plus facere, quatn
idem; Nihil in studiis parvum est; Cito scribendo nonfitut
bene scribatur, bene scribendo fit ut cito ; Omnia nostra dum
nascuntur placent, alioqui nee scriberentur ; — such sayings as
these, expressed with admirable terseness and lucidity, are
scattered all over the work, and have a value far beyond
the hmits of any single study. If they do not drop from
QuintiHan with the same curious negligence as they do

2CX) Latin Literature, [III.

from Aristotle (whose best things are nearly always said in
a parenthesis), the advantage is not wholly with the Greek
author; the more orderly and finished method of the
Roman teacher marks a higher constructive literary power
than that of Aristotle, whose singular genius made him
indeed the prince of lecturers, but did not place him in the
first rank of writers.

Beyond these incidental touches of wisdom and insight,
which give an enduring value to the whole substance of the
work, the chief interest for modem readers in the Institutio
Oratoria lies in three portions which are, more or less,
episodic to the strict purpose of the book, though they sum
up the spirit in which it is written. These are the dis-
cussions on the education of children in the first, and on
the larger education of mature life in the last book, and the
critical sketch of ancient literature up to his own time,
which occupies the first chapter of the tenth. Almost for
the first time in history — for the ideal system of Plato,
however brilliant and suggestive, stands on quite a difierent
footing — the theory of education was, in this age, made a
subject of profound thought and study. The precepts of
Quintilian, if taken in detail, address themselves to the
formation of a Roman of the Empire, and not a citizen of
modem Europe. But their main spirit is independent
of the accidents of any age or country. In the breadth of
his ideas, and in the wisdom of much of his detailed,
advice, Quintilian takes a place in the foremost rank of
educational writers. The dialogue on oratory written a
few years earlier by Tacitus names, as the main cause of
the decay of the liberal arts, not any lack of substantial
encouragement, but the negligence of parents and the want
of skill in teachers. To leave off vague and easy declama-
tions against luxury and the decay of morals, and to fix on
the great tmth that bad education is responsible for bad
life, was the first step towards a real reform. This Quin-
tilian insists upon with admirable clearness. Nor has any

II.] Quintilian. 201

writer on education grasped more firmly or expressed more
lucidly the complementary truth that education, from the
cradle upwards, is something which acts on the whole
intellectual and moral nature, and whose object is the pro-
duction of what the Romans called, in a simple form of
words which was full of meaning, "the good man." It
would pass beyond the province of literary criticism to
discuss the reasons why that reform never took place, or, if
it did, was confined to a circle too small to influence the
downward movement of the Empire at large. They belong
to a subject which is among the most interesting of all
studies, and which has hardly yet been studied with ade-
quate fulness or insight, the social history of the Roman
world in the second century.

One necessary part of the education of the orator was
a course of wide and careful reading in the best literature ;
and it is in this special connection that Quintilian devotes
part of his elaborate discussion on style to a brief critical
summary of the literature of Greece and that of his own
country. The frequent citations which have already been
made from this part of the work may indicate the very
great ability with which it is executed. Though his special
purpose as a professor of rhetoric is always kept in view,
his criticism passes beyond this formal limit. He expresses,
no doubt, what was the general opinion of the educated
world of his own time ; but the form of his criticism is so
careful and so choice, that many of his brief phrases have
remained the final word on the authors, both in prose and
verse, whom he mentions in his rapid survey. His catalogue
is far from being, as it has been disparagingly called, a mere
"list of the best hundred books." It is the dehberate
judgment of the best Roman scholarship, in an age of wide
reading and great learning, upon the masterpieces of their
own literature. His own preference for certain periods and
certain manners is well marked. But he never forgets that
the object of criticism is to disengage excellences rather

202 Latin Literature. pll.

than to censure faults : even his pronounced aversion from
the style of Seneca and the authors of the Neronian age
does not prevent him from seeing their merits, and giving
these ungrudging praise.

It is, indeed, in Quintilian that the reaction from the early
imperial manner comes to its climax. Statins had, to a
certain degree, gone back to Virgil ; Quintilian goes back
to Cicero without hesitation or reserve. He is the first of
the Ciceronians; Lactantius in the fourth century, John
of Salisbury in the twelfth, Petrarch in the fourteenth,
Erasmus in the sixteenth, all in a way continue the tradition
which he founded; nor is it surprising that the discovery
of a complete manuscript of the Insiitutio Oraioria early
in the fifteenth century was hailed by scholars as one of
the most important events of the Renaissance. He is not,
however, a mere imitator of his master's style ; indeed, his
style is, in some features and for some purposes, a better
one than his master's. It is as clear and fluent, and not
so verbose. He cannot rise to the great heights of Cicero ;
but for ordinary use it would be difficult to name a manner
that combines so well the Ciceronian dignity with the rich
colour and high finish added to Latin prose by the writers
of the earlier empire.

The body of criticism left by Quintilian in this remark-
able chapter is the more valuable because it includes nearly
all the great Latin writers. Classical literature, little as it
may have seemed so at the time, was already nearing its
end. With the generation which immediately followed,
that of his younger contemporaries, the Silver Age closes,
and a new age begins, which, though full of interest in
' many ways, is no longer classical. After Tacitus and the
younger Pliny, the main stream dwindles and loses itself
among quicksands. The writers who continue the pure
classical tradition are few, and of inferior power ; and the
chief interest of Latin literature becomes turned in other
directions, to the Christian writers on the one hand, and

II.] Quintilian. 203

on the other to those authors in whom we may trace the
beginning of new styles and methods, some of which bore
fruit at the time, while others remained undeveloped till
the later Middle Ages. Why this final effort of purely
Roman culture, made in the Flavian era with such sustained
energy and ability, on the whole scarcely survived a single
generation, is a question to which no simple answer can be
given. It brings us once more face to face with the other
question, which, indeed, haunts Latin literature from the
outset, whether the conquest and absorption of Greece by
Rome did not carry with it the seeds of a fatal weakness
in the victorious literature. Up to the end of the Golden
Age fresh waves of Greek influence had again and again
given new vitality and enlarged power to the Latin language.
That influence had now exhausted itself; for the Latin
world Greece had no further message. That Latin literature
began to decline so soon after the stimulating Greek influ-
ence ceased to operate, was partly due to external causes ;
the empire began to fight for its existence before the end
of the second century, and never afterwards gained a pause
in the continuous drain of its vital force. But there was
another reason more intimate and inherent; a literature
formed so completely on that of Greece paid the penalty
in a certain loss of independent vitality. The gap between
the literary Latin and the actual speech of the mass of
Latin-speaking people became too great to bridge over.
Classical Latin poetry was, as we have seen, written
throughout in alien metres, to which indeed the language
was adapted with immense dexterity, but which still re-
mained foreign to its natural structure. To a certain degree
the same was even true of prose, at least of the more im-
aginative prose which was developed through a study of
the great Greek masters of history, oratory, and philosophy.
In the Silver Age Latin literature, feeling a great past behind
it, definitely tried to cut itself away from Greece and stand
on its own feet. Quintilian's criticism implies throughout

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TAcrrus.

The end, however, was not yet; and in the generation
which immediately followed, the single imposing figure of
Cornelius Tacitus, the last of the great classical writers,
adds a final and, as it were, a sunset splendour to the
literature of Rome. The reigns of Nerva and Trajan, how-
ever much they were hailed as the beginning of a golden
age, were really far less fertile in literary works than those
of the Flavian Emperors ; and the boasted restoration of
freedom of speech was almost immediately followed by an
all but complete silence of the Latin tongue. When to
the name of Tacitus are added those of Juvenal and the
younger Pliny, there is literally almost no other author —
none certainly of the slightest literary importance — to be
chronicled until the reign of Hadrian ; and even then the
' principal authors are Greek, while mere compilers or
grammarians like Gellius and Suetonius are all that Latin
literature has to show. The beginnings of Christian litera-
ture in Minucius Felix, and of mediaeval literature in
Apuleius and the author of the Petvigilium Veneris, rise
in an age scanty in the amount and below mediocrity in
the substance of its production.

Little is known of the birth and parentage of Tacitus
beyond the mere fact that he was a Roman of good family.
Tradition places his birth at Interamna early in the reign
of Nero j he passed through the regular stages of an official

205

2o6 Latin Literature, [III.

career under the three Flavian Emperors. His marriage,
towards the end of the reign of Vespasian, to the daughter
and only surviving child of the eminent soldier and ad-
ministrator, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, aided him in obtaining
rapid promotion; he was praetor in the year in which
Domitian celebrated the Secular Games, and rose to the
dignity of the consulship during the brief reign of Nerva.
He was then a little over forty. When still quite a young
man he had written the dialogue on oratory, which is one
of the most interesting of Latin works on literary criticism ;
but throughout the reign of Domitian his pen was wholly
laid aside. The celebrated passage of the Agricola in
which he accounts for this silence may or may not give
an adequate account of the facts, but at all events gives
the keynote of the whole of his subsequent work, and of
that view of the imperial government of the first century
which his genius has fixed ineradicably in the imagination
of the world. Under Domitian a servile senate had ordered
the works of the two most eminent martyrs of reactionary
Stoicism, Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Senecio, to be
publicly burned in the forum ; " thinking that in that fire
they consumed the voice of the Roman people, their own
freedom, and the conscience of mankind. Great indeed,"
he bitterly continues, "are the proofs we have given of
what we can endure. The antique time saw to the utmost
bounds of freedom, we of servitude ; robbed by an inquisi-
tion of the common use of speech and hearing, we should
have lost our very memory with our voice, were it as much
in our power to forget as to be dumb. Now at last our
breath has come back ; yet in the nature of human frailty
remedies are slower than their diseases, and genius and
learning are more easily extinguished than recalled. Fifteen
years have been taken out of our lives, while youth passed
silently into age ; and we are the wretched survivors, not
only of those who have been taken away from us, but of
ourselves." Even a colourless translation may give some

-atmt^mtm — i < mi fm ti, \

in.] Tacitus. 207

idea of the distilled bitterness of this tremendous indict-
ment. We must remember that they are the words of a
man in the prime of life and at the height of public dis-
tinction, under a prince of whose government he speaks in
terms of almost extravagant hope and praise, to realise the
spirit in which he addressed himself to paint his lurid
portraits of Tiberius or Nero or Domitian.

The exquisitely beautiful memoir of his father-in-law, in
the introduction to which this passage occurs, was written
by Tacitus in the year which succeeded his own consulship,
and which saw the accession of Trajan. He was then
already meditating a large historical work on the events of
his own lifetime, for which he had, by reading and reflection,
as well as by his own administrative experience, accumu-
lated large materials. The essay De Ortgine Situ Moribus
ac Populis Germaniae was published about the same time
or a little later, and no doubt represents part of the
material which he had collected for the chapters of his
history dealing with the German wars, and which, as much
of it fell outside the scope of a general history of Rome,
Jie found it worth his while to publish as a separate treatise.
The scheme of his work became larger in the course of its
progress. As he originally planned it, it was to begin with
the accession of Galba, thus dealing with a period which
fell entirely within his own lifetime, and indeed within his
own recollection. But after completing his account of the
six reigns from Galba to Domitian, he did not, as he had
at first proposed, go on to those of Nerva and Trajan, but
resumed his task at an earlier period, and composed an
equally elaborate history of the empiie from the death of
Augustus down to the point where his earlier work began.
He still cherished the hope of resuming his history from
the accession of Nerva, but it is doubtful whether he lived
long enough to do so. Allusions to the Eastern conquests
of Trajan in the Annals show that the work cannot have
been published till after the year 115, and it would seem-—

2o6 Latin Literature. [III.

though nothing is known as to the events or employments
of his later life — that he did not long survive that date.
But the thirty books of his Annals and Histories y themselves
splendid work for a lifetime, gave the continuous history
of the empire in the most crucial and on the whole the
most remarkable period of its existence, the eighty-two
year$ which succeeded the death of its founder.

As in so many other cases, this memorable work has
only escaped total loss by the slenderest of chances. As it
is, only about one-half of the whole work is extant, consist-
ing of four large fragments. The first of these, which
begins at the beginning, breaks off abruptly in the fifteenth
year of the reign of Tiberius. A gap of two years follows,
and the second fragment carries on the history to Tiberius'
death. The story of the reign of Caligula is wholly lost ;
the third fragment begins in the seventh year of Claudius,
and goes on as far as the thirteenth of Nero. The fourth,
consisting of the first four and part of the fifth book of
the earlier part of the work, contains the events of little
more than a year, but that the terrible " year of Emperors '*
which followed the overthrow of Nero and shook the
Roman world to its foundations. A single manuscript has
preserved the last two of these four fragments ; to the hand
of one nameless Italian monk of the eleventh century we
owe our knowledge of one of the greatest masterpieces of
the ancient world.

Not the least interesting point in the study of the writings
of Tacitus is the way in which we can see his unique style
gradually forming and changing from his earlier to his later
manner. The dialogue De Oratoribus is his earliest extant
work. Its scene is laid in or about the year 75. But
Tacitus was then little if at all over twenty, and it may have
been written some five or six years later. In this book the
influence of Quintilian and the Ciceronian school is strongly
marked ; there is so much of Ciceronianism in the style
that many scholars have been inclined to assign it to some

IIL]

Tacittis.

209

other autiior, or have even identified it with the lost
treatise of Quintilian himself, on the Causes of the Decay of
Eloquence, But its style, while it bears the general colour
of the Silver Age, has also large traces of that compressed
and allusive manner which Tacitus later carried to such an
extreme degree of perfection. Full as it is of the ardor
iuveniliSy page after page recalling that Ciceronian manner
with which we are familiar in the Brutus or the De Oratore
by the balance of the periods, by the elaborate similes,
and by a certain fluid and florid evolution of what is
really commonplace thought, a touch here and there, like
contemnebat potius literas quam nesciebaty or vitio malignitatis
humanae vetera semper in iaude, praesentia infastidio esse,
or the criticism on the poetry of Caesar and Brutus, non
melius quam Cicero ^ sed felicius, quia illos fecisse pauciores
sciunt, anticipates the author of the Annals, with his mastery
of biting phrase and his unequalled power of innuendo. The
defence and attack of the older oratpry are both dramatic,
and to a certain extent unreal; it is probable that the
dialogue does in fact represent the matter of actual dis-
cussions between the two principal interlocutors, celebrated
orators of the Flavian period, to which as a young student
Tacitus had himself listened. One phrase dropped by
Aper, the apologist of the modem school, is of special
interest as coming from the future historian; among the
faults of the Ciceronian oratory is mentioned a languor and
heaviness in narration — tarda et iners structura in morem
annalium. It is just this quality in historical composition
that Tacitus set himself sedulously to conquer. By every
artifice of style, by daring use of vivid words and elliptical
constructions, by Studied avoidance of the old balance of
the sentence, he established a new historical manner which,
whatever may be its failings — and in the hands of any
writer of less genius they become at once obvious and
intolerable — never drops dead or says a thing in a certain
way because it is the way in which the ordinary rules of

2IO Latin Literature, [III.

style would prescribe that it should be said. A comparison
has often been drawn between Tacitus and Carlyle in this
matter. It may easily be pressed too far, as in some rather
grotesque attempts made to translate portions of the Latin
author intd phrases chosen or copied from the modem;
but there is enough likeness to give some colour even to
these attempts. Both authors began by writing in the
rather mechanical and commonplace style which was the
current fashion during their youth; in both the evolution
of the personal and inimitable manner from these earlier
essays into the full perfection of the Annals and the French
Revolution is a lesson in language of immense interest.

The fifteen silent years of Tacitus followed the publi-
cation of the dialogue on oratory. In the Agricola and
Germania the distinctively Tacitean style is still immature,
though it is well on the way towards maturity. The Germania
is less read for its literary merit than as the principal extant
account, and the only one which professes to cover the
ground at all systematically, of Central Europe under the
early Roman Empire. It does not appear whether, in
the course of his official employments, Tacitus had ever
been stationed on the frontier either of the Rhine or of the
Danube. The treatise bears little or no traces of first-
hand knowledge ; nor does he mention his authorities, with
the single exception of a reference to Caesar's Gallic War,
We can hardly doubt that he made free use of the material
amassed by Pliny in his Bella Germaniae^ and it is quite
possible that he really used few other sources. For the
work, though full of information, is not critically written,
and the historian constantly tends to pass into the moralist.
The Ciceronian style has now completely worn away, but
his manner is still as deeply rhetorical as ever. What he
has in view throughout is to bring the vices of civilised
luxury into stronger relief by a contrast with the idealised
simplicity of the German tribes ; and though his knowledge
and his candour alike make him stop short of falsifying

III.] Tacitus. 21 J

facts, his selection and disposition of facts is guided less by
a historical than by an ethical purpose. His lucid and
accurate description of the amber of the Baltic seems merely
introduced to point a sarcastic reference to Roman luxury ;
and the whole of the extremely valuable general account of
the social life of the Western German tribes is drawn in
implicit or expressed contrast to the elaborate social con-
ventions of what he considers a corrupt and degenerate
civilisation. The exaggeration of the sentiment is more
marked than in any of his other writings ; thus the fine
outburst, Nemo illic vitia ridet, nee corrumpere et corrumpi
secuium vocatur^ concludes a passage in which he gravely
suggests that the invention of writing is fatal to moral
innocence ; and though he is candid enough to note the
qualities of laziness and drunkenness which the Germans
shared with other half-barbarous races, he glosses over the
other quality common' to savages, want of feeling, with the
sounding and grandiose commonplace, expressed in a
phrase of characteristic force and brevity, feminis lugere
honestum est, viris meminisse.

The AgricoiUy perhaps the most beautiful piece of
biography in ancient literature, stands on a much higher
level than the Germania^ because here his heart was in the
work. The rhetorical bent is now fully under control,
while his mastery over " disposition " (to use the term of the
schools), or what one might call the architectural quality of
the book, could only have been gained by such large and
deep study of the art of rhetoric as is inculcated by Quin-
tihan. The Agricola has the stateliness, the ordered
movement, of a funeral oration ; the peroration, as it might
not unfairly be called, of the two concluding chapters,
reaches the highest level of the grave Roman eloquence,
and its language vibrates with a depth of feeling to which
Lucretius and Virgil alone in their greatest passages offer a
parallel in Latin. The sentence, with its subtle Virgilian
echoes, in which he laments his own and his wife's absence

212 Latin Literature. [III.

from Agricola's death-bed — omnia sine duhioy optime paretic
turn, adsidente amantissimit uxdre supetfu^e honori tuo ;
paucioribus tamen lacrimis comploraius es^ etnovissitna in luce
desideravtrunt aliquid oculi tut — shows a new and strange
power in Latin. It is still the ancient language, but it
anticipates in its cadences the language of the Vulgate and
of the statelier mediaeval prose.

Together with this remarkable power over new prose
rhythms, Tacitus shows in the Agricola the complete mastery
of mordant and unforgettable phrase which makes his
mature writing so unique. Into three or four ordinary
words he can put more concentrated meaning than any
other author. The likeness and contrast between these
brief phrases of his and the " half-lines ** of Virgil might
repay a long study. They^ire alike in their simple language,
which somehow or other is charged with the whole person-
ality of the author ; but the personality itself is in the sharpest
antithesis. The Virgilian phrases, with their grave pity, are
5teeped in a golden softness that is just touched with a
far-off trouble, a pathetic waver in the voice as if tears were
not far below it. Those of Tacitus are charged with
indignation instead of pity ; " like a jewel hung in ghastly
oight," to use Shakespeare's memorable simile, or like the
red and angry autumnal star in the Iliad, they quiver and
bum. Phrases like the famous ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem
appellant, or the felix opportunitate mortis, are the concen-
trated utterance of a great but deeply embittered mind;

In this spirit Tacitus set himself to narrate the history of
the first century of the Empire. Under the settled equable
government of Trajan, the reigns of the Julio-Claudian house
rapidly became a legendary epoch, a region of prodigies
and nightmares and Titanic crimes. Even at the time
they happened many of the events of those years had thrown
the imagination of their spectators into a fever. The strong
taint of insanity in the Claudian blood seemed to have
communicated itself to the world ruled over by that extra-

III.] Tacitus, 213

ordinary series of men, about whom there was something
inhuman and supernatural. Most of them were publicly
deified before their death. The Fortuna Urbis took in them
successive and often monstrous incarnations. Augustus
himself was supposed to have the gift of divination ; his
foreknowledge overleapt the extinction of his own house,
and foresaw, across a gap of fifty years, the brief reign of
Galba. Caligula threw an arch of prodigious span over the
Roman Forum, above the roofs of the basilica of Julius
Caesar, that from his house on the Palatine he might cross
more easily to sup with his brother^ Jupiter Capitolinus.
Nero's death was for years regarded over half the Empire
as incredible ; men waited in a frenzy of excited terror for
the reappearance of the vanished Antichrist. Even the
Flavian house was surrounded by much of the same super-
natural atmosphere. The accession of Vespasian was
signalised by his performing public miracles in Egypt;
Domitian, when he directed that he should be formally
addressed as Our Lord God by all who approached him,
was merely settling rules for an established practise of court
etiquette. In this thunderous unnatural air legends of all
sorts sp^ng up right and left; foremost, and including
nearly all the rest, the legend of the Empire itself, which
(like that of the French Revolution) we are only now
beginning to unravel. The modem school of historians
find in authentic documents, written and unwritten, the
story of a continuous and able administration of the Empire
through all those years by the permanent officials, and
traces of a continuous personal policy of the Emperors
themselves sustaining that administration against the re-
actionary tendencies of the Senate. Even the massacres of
Nero and Domitian are held to have been probably dictated
by imperious public necessity. The confidential advisers
of the Emperors acted as a sort of Committee of Public
Safety, silent and active, while the credit or obloquy was
all heaped op ^ single person. It took three generations

214 Latin Literature, [III.

to carry the imperial system finally out of danger; but
when this end was at last attained, the era of the Good
Emperors succeeded as a matter of course; much as in
France, the success of the Revolution once fairly secured,
the moderate government of the Directory and Consulate
quietly succeeded to the Terror and the Revolutionary
Tribunal.

Such is one view now taken of the early Roman Empire.
Its weakness is that it explains too much. How or why,
if the matter was really as simple as this, did the traditional
legend of the Empire grow up and extinguish the real
facts ? Is it possible that the malignant genius of a single
historian should outweigh, not only perishable facts, but
the large body of imperialist literature which extends from
the great Augustans down to Statius and Quintilian?
Even if we set aside Juvenal and Suetonius as a rhetorician
and a gossipmonger, that only makes the weight Tacitus
has to sustain more overwhelming. It is hardly possible
to overrate the effect of a single work of great genius;
but the more we study works of great genius the more
certain does it appear that they are all founded on real,
though it may be transcendental, truth. Systems, like
persons, are to be known by their fruits. The Empire
produced, as the flower of its culture and in the inner
circle of its hierarchy, the type of men of whom Tacitus
is the most eminent example; and- the indignant hatred
it kindled in its children leaves it condemned before the
judgment of history.

The surviving fragments of the Annals and Histories
leave three great pictures impressed upon the reader's
mind : the personality of Tiberius, the court of Nero, and
the whole fabric and machinery of empire in the year
of the four Emperors. The lost history of the reigns of
Caligula and Domitian would no doubt have added two
other pictures as memorable and as dramatic, but cotdd
hardly make any serious change in the main structure of

III.] Tacitus. 215

the imperial legend as it is successively presented in these
three imposing scenes.

The character and statesmanship of Tiberius is one of
the most vexed problems in Roman history; and it is
significant to observe how, in all the discussions about
it, the question perpetually reverts to another — the view
to be taken of the personality of the historian who wrote
nearly a century after Tiberius' accession, and was not
born till long after his death. In no part of his work
does Tacitus use his great weapon, insinuation of motive,
with such terrible effect. All the speeches or letters of
the Emperor quoted by him, almost all the actions he
records, are given with this malign sidelight upon them :
that, in spite of it, we lose our respect for neither Emperor
nor historian is strong evidence both of the genius of
the latter and the real greatness of the former. The case
of Germanicus Caesar is a cardinal instance. In the whole
account of the relations of Tiberius to his nephew there
is nothing in the mere facts as stated inconsistent with
confidence and even with cordiality. Tiberius pronounces
a long and stately eulogy on Germanicus in the senate
for his suppression of the revolt of the German legions.
He recalls him from the German frontier, where the
Roman supremacy was now thoroughly re-established, and
where the hot-headed young general was on the point
of entangling himself in fresh and dangerous conquests,
in order to place him in supreme command in the Eastern
provinces; but first he allows him the splendid pageant
of a Roman triumph, and gives an immense donative
to the population of the capital in his nephew's name.
Germanicus is sent to the East with mains imperium over
the whole of the transmarine provinces, a position more
splendid than any that Tiberius himself had held during
the lifetime of Augustus, and one that almost raised him to
the rank of a colleague in the Empire. Then Germanicus
embroils himself hopelessly with his principal subordinate^

2i6 Latin Literature. [III.

the imperial legate of Syria, and his illness and death
at Antioch put an end to a situation which is rapidly
becoming impossible. His remains are solemnly brought
back to Rome, and honoured with a splendid funeral ; the
proclamation of Tiberius fixing the termination of the
public mourning is in its gravity and good sense one of
the most striking documents in Roman history. But in
Tacitus every word and action of Tiberius has its malignant
interpretation or comment. He recalls Germanicus from
the Rhine out of mingled jealousy and fear; he makes
him viceroy of the East in order to carry out a diabolically
elaborate scheme for bringmg about his destruction. The
vague rumours of poison or magic that ran during his
last illness among the excitable and grossly superstitious
populace of Antioch are gravely recorded as ground for
the worst suspicions. That dreadful woman, the elder
Agrippina, had, even in her husband's lifetime, made herself
intolerable by her pride and jealousy ; after her husband's
death she seems to have become quite insane, and the
recklessness of her tongue knew no bounds. To Tacitus
all her ravings, collected from hearsay or preserved in
the memoirs of her equally appalling daughter, the mother
of Nero, represent serious historical documents; and the
portrait of Tiberius is from first to last deeply influenced
by, and indeed largely founded on, the testimony of a
madwoman.

The three books and a half of the Annals which contain
the principate of Nero are not occupied with the portrai-
ture of a single great personality, nor are they full, like
the earlier books, of scathing phrases and poisonous
insinuations. The reign of Nero was, indeed, one which
required little rhetorical artifice to present as something
portentous. The external history of the Empire, till
towards its close, was without remarkable incident. The
wars on the Armenian frontier hardly affected the general
quiet of the Empire ; the revolt of Britain was an isolated

III.] Tacitus, 217

occurrence, and soon put down. The German tribes,
engaged in fierce internal conflicts, left the legions on
the Rhine almost undisturbed. The provinces, though
suffering under heavy taxation, were on the whole well
ruled. Public interest was concentrated on the capital ;
and the startling events which took place there gave the
fullest scope to the dramatic genius of the historian. The
court of Nero lives before us in his masterly delineation.
Nero himself, Seneca and Tigellinus, the Empress-mother,
the conspirators of the year 65, form a portrait-gallery
of sombre magnificence, which surpasses in vivid power
the more elaborate and artificial picture of the reign of
Tiberius. With all his immense ability and his deep
psychological insight, Tacitus is not a profound political
thinker ; as he approaches the times which fell within his
own personal knowledge he disentangles himself more and
more from the preconceptions of narrow theory, and gives
his dramatic gift fuller play. It is for this reason that
the Histories^ dealing with a period which was wholly
within his own lifetime, and many of the main actors in
which he knew personally and intimately, are a greater
historical work than even the Annals, He moves with a
more certain step in an ampler field. The events of the
year 69, which occupy almost the whole of the extant
part of the Histories, offer the largest and most crowded
canvas ever presented to a Roman historian. And Tacitus
rises fully to the amplitude of his subject. It is in these
books that the material greatness of the Empire has found
its largest expression. In the Annals Rome is the core
of the world, and the provinces stretch dimly away from
it, shaken from time to time by wars or military revolts
that hardly touch the great central life of the capital.
Here, though the action opens indeed in the capital in that
wet stormy January, the main interest is soon transferred
to distant fields ; the life of the Empire still converges on
Rome as a centre, but no longer issues firom it as ifrom

2i8 Latin Literature, \jlvu

a common heart and brain. The provinces had been the
spoil of Rome ; Rome herself is now becoming the spoil
of the provinces. The most splendid piece of narration
in the Histories^ and one of the finest in the work of any
historian, is the story of the second battle of Bedriacum,
and the storm and sack of Cremona by the Moesian and
Pannonian legions. This is the central thought which
makes it so tragical. The little vivid touches in which
Tacitus excels are used towards this purpose with ex-
traordinary effect; as in the incident of the third legion
saluting the rising sun — ita in Suria mos est — which brings
before our imagination the new and fatal character of
the great provincial armies^ or the casual words of the
Flavian general. The bath will soon be hot enough^ which
gave the signal for the burning of Cremona,. In these
scenes the whole tragedy of the Empire rises before' us.
The armies of the Danube and Rhine left the frontiers
defenceless while they met in the shock of battle on
Italian soil, still soaking with Roman blood and littered
with unburied Roman corpses; behind them the whole
armed strength of the Empire — immensa belli moles — was
gathering out of Gaul, Spain, Syria, and Hungary; and
before the year was out, the Roman Capitol itself, in a
trifling struggle between small bodies of the opposing
forces, went up in flame at the hands of the German troops
of Vitellius.

This great pageant of history is presented by Tacitus in
a style which, in its sombre yet gorgeous colouring, is
unique in literature. In mere grammatical mechanism it
bears close affinity to the other Latin writing of the period,
but in all its more intimate qualities it is peculiar to Tacitus
alone; he founded his own style, and did not transmit
it to any successor. The influence of Virgil over prose
reaches in him its most marked degree. Direct transfer-
ences of phrase are not infrequent ; and throughout, as one
reads the Histories^ one is reminded of the Aeneid, not only

III.'] Tacitus, 219

by particular phrases, but by a more indefinable quality
permeating the style. The narrative of the siege and firing
of the Capitol, to take one striking instance, is plainly
from the hand of a writer saturated with the movement
and language of VirgiPs Sack of Troy, A modem historian
might have quoted Virgil in a pote; with Tacitus the
Virgilian reminiscences are interwoven with the whole
structure of his narrative. The whole of the three fine
chapters will repay minute comparison; but some of the
more striking resemblances are worth noting as a study
in language. Erigunt actem, says the historian, usque ad
primas Capitolinae arcis fores , , , in tectum egressi saxis
tegulisque Vitellianos obruebant . . , ni revolsas undique
statuaSy decora maiorum, in ipso aditu obiecissent . . . vis
propior atque acrior ingruebat . . . quam non Porsena dedita
urbe neque GalU temerare potuissent . . . inrumpunt Vitelliani
et cuncta sanguine ferro flammisque miscent. We seem to
be present once more at that terrible night in Troy —

Vestibulum ante ipsum primoque in limine Pyrrhus . . .
Evado ad summi fastigia culminis . . .

. . . turres ac tecta domorum
Culmina convellunt ...

. . . veterum decora alta parentutn
Devolvunt . . . nee saxa, nee uilum
Telorum interea cess at genus . . .

. . . armorumque ingruit horror . . .

, . , et iam per moenia clarior ignis
Auditur^ propiusque aestus incendia volvunt . . .
Quos neque Tydides^ nee Larissaeus Achilles ^
Non anni domuere decern, non milk carinae . . .
Fit via vi; rumpunt aditu s primosque trucidant
Inmissi Danai, et late loca milite compleni.

These quotations indicate strikingly enough the way in
which Tacitus is steeped in the Virgilian manner and
diction. The whole passage must be read continuously to

220 Latin Literature, pil.

realise the immense skill with which he uses it, and the
tragic height it adds to the narrative.

Nor is the deep gloom of his history, though adorned
with the utmost brilliance of rhetoric, lightened by any
belief in Providence or any distinct hope for the future.
The artificial optimism of the Stoics is alien from his whole
temper; and his practical acquiescence in the existing
system under the reign of Domitian only added bitterness
to his inward revolt ifrom it. The phrases of religion are
merely used by him to darken the shades of his narrative ;
Deum ira in rem Romanam^ one of the most striking of
them, might almost be taken as a second title for his
history. On the very last page of the Annals he concludes a
brief notice of the ruin and exile of Cassius Asclepiodotus,
whose crime was that he had not deserted an imfortunate
friend, with the striking words, " Such is the even-handed-
ness of Heaven towards good and evil conduct." Even
his praises of the government of Trajan are half-hearted
and incredulous ; " the rare happiness of a time when men
may think what they will, and say what they think," is to
his mind a mere interlude, a brief lightening of the dark-
ness before it once more descends on a world where the
ambiguous power of fate or chance is the only permanent
ruler, and where the gods intervene, not to protect, but only
to avenge.

IV,

JUVENAL, THE YOUNGER PUNY, SUETONIOUS : DECAY OF

CLASSICAL LATIN.

From the name of Tacitus that of Juvenal is inseparable.
The pictures drawn of the Empire by the historian and the
satirist are in such striking accordance that they create
a greater plausibility for the common view they hold than
could be given by any single representation; and while
Juvenal lends additional weight and colour to the Tacitean
presentment of the imperial legend, he acquires from it
in return an importance which could hardly otherwise have
been sustained by his exaggerated and glaring rhetoric.

As regards the life and personality of the last great
Roman satirist we are in all but total ignorance. Several
lives of him exist which are confused and contradictory in
detail. He was bom at Aquinum, probably in the reign
of Nero ; an inscription on a little temple of Ceres, dedi-
cated by him there, indicates that he had served in the
army as commander of a Dalmatian cohort, and was super-
intendent (as one of the chief men of the town) of the
civic worship paid to Vespasian after his deification. The
circumstance of his banishment for offence given to an
actor who was high in favour with the Emperor is well
authenticated; but neither its place nor its time can be
fixed. It appears from the Satires themselves that they
were written late in life ; we are informed that he reached
his eightieth year, and lived into the reign of Antoninus

221

222 Latin Literature. [HI.

Pius. Martial, by whom he is repeatedly mentioned,
alludes to him only as a rhetorician, not as a satirist.
The sixteen satires (of which the last is, perhaps, not
genuine) were published at intervals under Trajan and
Hadrian. They fall into two groups ; the first nine, which
are at once the most powerful and the least agreeable,
being separated by a considerable interval of years from the
others, in which a certain softening of tone and a tendency
to dwell on the praise of virtue more than on the ignoble
details of vice is united with a failing power that marks
the approach of senility.

Juvenal is the most savage — one might almost say the
most brutal — of all the Roman satirists. Lucilius, when
he "scourged the town," did so in the high spirits and
voluble diction of a comparatively simple age. Horace
soon learned to drop the bitterness which appears in his
earlier satires, and to make them the vehicle for his gentle
wisdom and urbane humour. The writing of Persius was
that of a student who gathered the types he satirised
from books rather than from Hfe. Juvenal brought to his
task not only a wide knowledge of the world — or, at least,
of the world of the capital — but a singular power of
mordant phrase, and a mastery over crude and vivid
effect that keeps the reader suspended between disgust
and admiration. In the commonplaces of morality, though
often elevated and occasionally noble, he does not show
any exceptional power or insight ; but his graphic realism,
combined (as realism often is) with a total absence of all
but the grimmest forms of humour, makes his verses cut
like a knife. Facit indignatio versum, he truly says of his
own work ; with far less flexibility, he has all the remorse-
lessness of Swift. That singular product of the last da)rs
of paganism, the epigrammatist Palladas of Alexandria, is
the only ancient author who shows the same spirit. Of
his earUer work the second and ninth satires, and a great
part of the sixth, have a cold prurience and disgustingness

IV.] Juvenal, 223

of detail, that even Swift only approaches at his worst
moments. Yet the sixth satire, at all events, is an undeni-
able masterpiece ; however raw the colour, however exag-
gerated the drawing, his pictures of Roman life have a
force that stamps them permanently on the imagination;
his Legend of Bad Women, as this satire might be called,
has gone far to make history.

It is in the third satire that his peculiar gift of vivid
painting finds its best and easiest scope. In this elaborate
indictment of the life of the capital, put into the mouth
of a man who is leaving it for a little sleepy provincial
town, he draws a picture of the Rome he knew, its social
life and its physical features, its everyday sights and sounds,
that brings it before us more clearly and sharply than even
the Rome of Horace or Cicero. The drip of the water
from the aqueduct that passed over the gate from which
the dusty squalid Appian Way stretched through its long
suburb; the garret under the tiles where, just as now,
the pigeons sleeked themselves in the sun and the rain
drummed on the roof; the narrow crowded streets, half
choked with the builders* carts, ankle-deep in mud, and
the pavement ringing under the heavy military boots of
guardsmen ; the tavern waiters trotting along with a pyra-
mid of hot dishes on their head; the flowerpots falling
from high window ledges ; night, with the shuttered shops,
the silence broken by some sudden street brawl, the dark-
ness shaken by a flare of torches as some great man,
wrapped in his scarlet cloak, passes along from a dinner-
party with his long train of clients and slaves : these scenes
live for us in Juvenal, and are perhaps the picture of
ancient Rome that is most abidingly impressed on our
memory. The substance of the satire is familiar to English
readers from the fine copy of Johnson, whose London
follows it closely, and is one of the ablest and most
animated modem imitations of a classical original. The
same author's noble poem on the Vanity of Human IVisIies

224 Latin Literatute. [III.

is a more free, but equally spirited rendering of the tenth
satire, which stands at the head of the later portion of
Juvenal's work. In this, and in those of the subsequent
satires which do not show traces of declining power, notably
the eleventh and thirteenth, the rhetoric is less gaudy
and the thought rises to a nobler tone. The fine passage
at the end of the tenth satire, where he points out what
it is permitted mankind to pray for, and that in the thir-
teenth, where he paints the torments of conscience in the
unpunished sinner, have something in them which combines
the lofty ardour of Lucretius with the subtle psychological
insight of Horace, and to readers in all ages have been,
as they still remain, a powerful influence over conduct.
Equally elevated in tone, and with a temperate gravity
peculiar to itself, is the part of the fourteenth satire which
deals with the education of the young. We seem to hear
once more in it the enlightened eloquence of Quintilian ;
in the famous Maxima debeiur puero revereniia he sums up
in a single memorable phrase the whol^ spirit of the
instructor and the moralist. The allusions to childhood
here and elsewhere show Juvenal on his most pleasing
side ; his rhetorical vices had not infected the real simplicity
of his nature, or his admiration for goodness and innocence.
In his power over trenchant expression he rivals Tacitus
himself. Some of his phrases, Hke the one just quoted, have
obtained a world-wide currency, and even reached the
crowning honour of habitual misquotation; his Hoc volo
sic iubeo, his Mens sana in corpore sanOy his Quis custddict
ipsos custodes ? are more familiar than all but the best-known
lines of Virgil and Horace. But perhaps his most charac-
teristic lines are rather those where his moral indignation
breaks forth in a sort of splendid violence quite peculiar
to himself; lines like —

Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causes,
or —

Magnaque numinibus vota exaudita maHgnis,

IV.] The Younger Pliny. 225

in which the haughty Roman language is still used with
unimpaired weight and magnificence.

To pass from Juvenal to the other distinguished con-
temporary of Tacitus, the younger Pliny, is like exchanging
the steaming atmosphere and gorgeous colours of a hot-
house for the commonplace trimness of a suburban garden.
The nephew and adopted son of his celebrated uncle, Pliny
had received from his earliest years the most elaborate
training which ever fell to the lot of mediocrity. His
uncle's death left him at the age of seventeen already a
finished pedant. The story which he tells, with obvious
self-satisfaction, of how he spent the awful night of the
eruption of Vesuvius in making extracts from Livy for his
commonplace book, sets the whole man before us. He
became a successful pleader in the courts, and passed
through the usual public offices up to the consulate. At
the age of fi^fty he was imperial legate of Bithynia: the
extant official correspondence between him and the Emperor
during this governorship shows him still unchanged ; upright
and conscientious, but irresolute, pedantic, and totally
unable to think and act for himself in any unusual circum-
stances. The contrast between Pliny's fidgety indecision
and the quiet strength and inexhaustible patience of Trajan,
though scarcely what Pliny meant to bring out, is the
first and last impression conveyed to us by this curious
correspondence. The nine books of his private letters,
though prepared, and in many cases evidently written for
publication, give a varied and interesting picture of the
time. Here, too, the character of the writer in its virtues
and its weakness is throughout unmistakeable. Pliny, the
noble-minded citizen, — Pliny, the munificent patron, — Pliny,
the eminent man of letters, — Pliny, the affectionate husband
and humane master, — Pliny, the man of principle, is in his
various phases the real subject of the whole collection.
His opinions are alwa)rs just and elegant ; few writers can
express truisms with greater fervour. The letters to Tacitus,
Q

226 Latin Literature, [III.

with whom he was throughout life in close intimacy, are
among the most interesting and the fullest of unintentional
humour. Tacitus was the elder of the two; and Pliny,
" when very young ** — the words are his own, — had chosen
him as his model and sought to follow his fame. " There
were then many writers of brilliant genius ; but you," he
writes to Tacitus, " so strong was the affinity of our natures,
seemed to me at once the easiest to imitate and the most
worthy of imitation. Now we are named together ; both
of us have, I may say, some name in literature, for, as
I include myself, I must be moderate in my praise of
you." This to the author who had already published the
Histories! Before so exquisite a self- revelation criticism
itself is silenced.

The cult of Ciceronianism established by Quintilian is
the real origin of the collection of Pliny's Letters, Cicero
and Pliny had many weaknesses and some virtues in
common, and the desire of emulating Cicero, which Pliny
openly and repeatedly expresses, had a considerable effect
in exaggerating his weaknesses. Cicero was vain, quick-
tempered, excitable; his sensibilities were easily moved,
and found naturd and copious expression in the language
of which he was a consummate master. Pliny, the most
steady-going of mankind, sets himself to imitate this ex-
citable temperament with the utmost seriousness ; he culti-
vates sensibility, he even cultivates vanity. His elaborate
and graceful descriptions of scenery — the fountain of Cli-
tumnus or the villa overlooking the Tiber valley — are no
more consciously insincere than his tears over the death
of friends, or the urgency with which he begs his wife
to write to him from the country twice a day. But these
fine feelings are meant primarily to impress the public ;
and a public which could be impressed by the spectacle
of a man giving a dinner-party, and actually letting his
untitled guests drink the same wine that was being drunk at
the head of the table, put little check upon lapses of taste.

IV.] The Younger Pliny, 227

Yet with all his affectations and fatuities, Pliny compels
respect, and even a measure of admiration, by the real
goodness of his character. Where a good life is lived, it
hardly becomes us to be too critical of motives and springs
of action ; and in Pliny's case the practice of domestic and
civic virtue was accompanied by a considerable literary
gift. Had we a picture drawn with equal copiousness and
grace of the Rome of Marcus Aurelius half a century later,
it would be a priceless addition to history. Pliny's world —
partly because it is presented with such rich detail — reminds
us, more than that of any other period of Roman history,
of the society of our own day. To pass from Cicero's letters
to his is curiously like passing from the eighteenth to the
nineteenth century. In other respects, indeed, they have
what might be called an eighteenth century flavour. Some
of the more elaborate of them would fall quite naturally
into place among the essays of the Spectator or the Rambler;
in many others the combination of thin and lucid common-
sense with a vein of calculated sensibility can hardly be
paralleled till we reach the age of Rousseau.
. Part of this real or assumed sensibility was the interest in
scenery and the beauties of nature, which in Pliny, as in the
eighteenth century authors, is cultivated for its own sake as
an element in self-culture. In the words with which he
winds up one of the most elaborate of his descriptive pieces,
that on the lake of Vadimo in Tuscany — Me nihil aeque ac
naturae opera delectant — there is an accent which hardly
recurs till the age of the Seasons and of Gray's Letters,
Like Gray, Pliny took a keen pleasure in exploring the
more romantic districts of his country ; his description of
the lake in the letter just mentioned is curiously like
passages from the journal in which Gray records his
discovery — for it was little less — of Thirlmere and Der-
wentwater. He views the Clitumnus with the eye of an
accomplished landscape-gardener; he notes the cypresses
on the hill, the ash and poplar groves by the water's edge ;

228 Latin Literature. [III.

he counts the shining pebbles under the clear ice-cold
water, and watches the green reflections of the overhanging
trees; and finally, as Thomson or Cowper might have
done, mentions the abundance of comfortable villas as the
last charm of the landscape.

The munificent benefactions of Pliny to his native town
of Comum, and his anxiety that, instead of sending its most
promising boys to study at Milan — only thirty miles off — it
should provide for them at home what would now be called
a university education, are among the many indications
which show us how Rome was diffusing itself over Italy,
as Italy was over the Latin-speaking provinces. Under
Hadrian and the Antonines this process went on with even
growing force. Country Ufe, or that mixture of t#wn and
country life afforded by the small provincial towns, came
to be more and more of a fashion, and the depopulation of
the capital had made insensible progress long before the
period of renewed anarchy that followed the assassination
of Commodus. Whether the rapid decay of Latin
literature which took place after the death of Pliny and
Tacitus was connected with this weakening of the central
life of Rome, is a question to which we hardly can hazard
a definite answer. Under the three reigns which succeeded
that of Trajan, a period of sixty-four years of internal peace,
of beneficent rule, of enlightened and humane legislation,
the cultured society shown to us in Pliny's Letters as diffused
all over Italy remained strangely silent. Of all the streams
of tradition which descended on this age, the schools of
law and grammar alone kept their course ; the rest dwindle
away and disappear. Sixty years pass without a single
poet or historian, even of the second rate ; one or two
eminent jurists share the field with one or two incon-
siderable extract-makers and epitomators, who barely rise
out of the common herd of undistinguished grammarians.
Among the obscure poets mentioned by Pliny, the name of
Vergilius Romanus may excite a momentary curiosity ; he

IV<f Suetonius, 229

wai the author of Terentian comedies, which probably did
not long survive the private recitations for which they
were composed. The epitome of the History of Pompeius
Trogus, made by the otherwise unknown Marcus Junianus
Justinus, has been already mentioned; like the brief and
poorly executed abridgment of Livy by Julius or Lucius
Annaeus^ Florus (one of the common text-books of the
Middle Ages), it is probably to be placed under Hadrian.
Javolenus Priscus, a copious and highly esteemed juridical
writer, and head of one of the two great schools of Roman
jurisprudence, is best remembered by the story of his witty
interruption at a public recitation, which Pliny, (part of
whose character it was to joke with difficulty) tells with a
scandalised gravity even more amusing than the story itself.
His successor as head of the school, Salvius Julianus, was
of equal juristic distinction ; his codification of praetorian
law received imperial sanction from Hadrian, and became
the authorised civil code. He was one of the instructors of
Marcus Aurelius. The wealth he acquired by his profession
was destined, in the strange revolutions of human affairs,
to be the purchase-money of the Empire for his great-
grandson, Didius Julianus, when it was set up at auction by
the praetorian guards. More eminent as u man of letters
than either of these is their contemporary Gains, whose
Institutes of Civil Law, published at the beginning of the
reign of Marcus Aurelius, have ever since remained one of
the foremost manuals of Roman jurisprudence.

But the literary poverty of this age in Latin writing is
most strikingly indicated by merely naming its principal
author. At any previous period the name of Gains Suetonius
Tranquillus would have been low down in the second rank :
here it rises to the first ; nor is there any other name which
fairly equals his, either in importance or in interest. The
son of an officer of the thirteenth legion, Suetonius practised
in early life as an advocate, subsequently became one of
Hadrian's private secretaries, and devoted his later years to

230 Latin Literature, [III.

literary research and compilation, somewhat in the manner,
though without the encyclopedic scope, of Varro. In his
youth he had been an intimate friend of the younger Pliny,
who speaks in high terms of his learning and integrity.
The greater part of his voluminous writings are lost ; they
included many works on grammar, rhetoric, and archae-
ology, and several on natural -history and physical science.
Fragments survive of his elaborate treatise J^e Viris
Illustrtbus, an exhaustive history of Latin literature up to
his own day : excerpts made from it by St. Jerome in his
Chronicle are the source from which much of our informa-
tion as to Latin authors is derived, and several complete
lives have been prefixed to manuscripts of the works of the
respective authors, and thus independently preserved.
But his most interesting, and probably his most valuable
work, the Lives of the Twelve Caesars^ has made him
one of the most widely known of the later classical
writers. It was published under Hadrian in the year
120, and dedicated to his praetorian prefect, Septicius
Clams. Tacitus (perhaps because he was still alive) is
never mentioned, and not certainly made use of. Both
authors had access, in the main, to the same materials ; but
the confidential position of Suetonius as Hadrian's secretary
no doubt increased his natural tendency to collect stories
and preserve all sorts of trivial or scandalous gossip, rather
than make any attempt to write serious history. It is just
this, however, which gives unique interest and value to the
Lives of the Caesars, We can spare political insight or
consecutive arrangement in an author who is so lavish in
the personal detail that makes much of the life of history :
who tells us the colour of Caesar's eyes, who quotes from
a dozen private letters of Augustus, who shows us Caligula
shouting to the moon from his palace roof, and Nero
lecturing on the construction of the organ. There perhaps
never was a series of biographies so crammed with anecdote.
Nor is the style without a certain sort of merits from its

IV.] Aulus Gellius. 231

entire and unaffected simplicity. After all the fine writing
of the previous century it is, for a little while, almost a
relief to come on an author who is frankly without style,
and says what he has to say straightforwardly. But it if5
only the absorbing interest of the matter which makes this
kind of writing long endurable. It is, in truth, the beginning
of barbarism ; and Suetonius measures more than half the
distance from the fine familiar prose of the Golden Age to
the base jargon of the authors of the Augustan History a
century and a half later, under Diocletian.

Amid the decay of imagination and of the higher qualities
of style, the tradition of industry and accuracy to some
degree survived. The biographies of Suetonius show con-
siderable research and absolute candour; and the same
qualities, though united with a feebler judgment, appear in
the interesting miscellanies of his younger contemporary,
Aulus Gellius. This work, published under the fanciful
title of Noctes Atticae^ is valuable at once as a collection
of extracts from older writers and as a source of information
regarding the knowledge and studies of his own age. Few
authors are more scrupulously accurate in quotation ; and
by this conscientiousness, as well as by his real admiration
for the great writers, he shows the pedantry of the time on
its most pleasing side.

The twenty books of the Noctes Atticae were the compi-
lation of many years ; but the title was chosen from the fact
of the work having been begun during a winter spent by
the author at Athens, when about thirty years of age. He
was only one among a number of his countrymen, old as
well as young, who found the atmosphere of that university
town more congenial to study than the noisy, unhealthy,
and crowded capital, or than the quiet, but ill-equipped,
provincial towns of Italy. Athens once more became, for
a short time, the chief centre of European culture. Herodes
Atticus, that remarkable figure who traced his descent to
the very beginnings of Athenian history and the semi-

232 Latin Literature, [III.

mythical Aeacidae of Aegina, and who was consul of Rome
under Antoninus Pius, had taken up his permanent residence
in his native town, and devoted his vast wealth to the
architectural embellishment of Athens, and to a munificent
patronage of letters. Plutarch and Arrian, the two most
eminent authors of the age, both spent much of their time
there; and the Emperor Hadrian, by his repeated and
protracted visits — he once lived at Athens for three years
together — established the reputation of the city as a fashion-
able resort, and superintended the building of an entirely
new quarter to accommodate the great influx of permanent
residents. The accident of imperial patronage doubtless
added force to the other causes which made Greek take
fresh growth, and become for a time almost the dominant
language of the Empire. Though two centuries were still
to pass before the foundation of Constantinople, the centre
of gravity of the huge fabric of government was already
passing from Italy to the Balkan peninsula, and Italy
itself was becoming slowly but surely one of the Western
provinces. Nature herself seemed to have fixed the Eastern
limit of the Latin language at the Adriatic, and even in
Italy Greek was equally familiar with Latin to the educated
classes. Suetonius, Fronto, Hadrian himself, wrote in
Latin and Greek indifferently. Marcus Aurelius used Greek
by preference, even when writing of his predecessors and
the events of Roman history. From Plutarch to Lucian
the Greek authors completely predominate over the Latin.
In the sombre century which followed, both Greek and
Latin literature were all but extinguished; the partial
revival of the latter in the fourth century was artificial and
short-lived ; and though the tradition of the classical manner
took long to die away, the classical writers themselves
completely cease with Suetonius. A new Latin, that of the
Middle Ages, was already rising to take the place of
the speech handed down by the Republic to the Empire.

-^.v/^

V V-'

THE ELOCUTIO NOVELLA,

Though the partial renascence in art and letters which
took place in the long peaceful reign of Hadrian was on the
whole a Greek, or, at all events, a Graeco-Roman movement,
an attempt at least towards a corresponding movement in
purely Latin literature, both in prose and verse, was made
about the same time, and might have had important results
had outward circumstances allowed it a reasonable chance
of development. As it is, Apuleius and Fronto in prose,
and the new school of poets, of whom the unknown author
of the Pervigilium Veneris is the most striking and typical,
represent not merely a fresh refinement in the artificial
management of thought and language, but the appearance
on the surface of certain native qualities in Latin, long
suppressed by the decisive supremacy of the manner
established as classical under the Republic, but throughout
latent in the structure and temperament of the language.
Just when Latin seemed to be giving way on all hands to
Greek, the signs are first seen of a much more momentous
change, the rise of a new Latin, which not only became
a common speech for all Europe, but was the ground-
work of the Romance languages and of half a dozen
important national literatures. The decay of education,
the growth of vulgarisms, and the degradation of the
fine, but extremely artificial, literary language of the
classical period, went hand in hand towards this change

233

234 Latin Literature. [III.

with the extreme subtleties and refinements introduced by
the ablest of the new writers, who were no longer content,
like Quintilian and Pliny, to rest satisfied with the manner
and diction of the Golden Age. The work of this school
of authors is therefore of unusual interest; for they may
not unreasonably be called a school, as working, though
unconsciously, from different directions towards the same
common end.

The theory of this new manner has had considerable
Ught thrown upon it by the fragments of the works of
Marcus Cornelius Fronto, recovered early in the present
century by Angelo Mai from palimpsests in the Vatican
and Ambrosian libraries at Rome and Milan. Fronto was
the most celebrated rhetorician of his time, and exercised
a commanding influence on literary criticism. The reign
of the Spanish school was now over ; Fronto was of African
origin ; and though it does not follow that he was not of
pure Roman blood, the influence of a semi-tropical atmos-
phere and Afirican surroundings altered the t)rpe, and
produced a new strain, which we can trace later under
different forms in the great African school of ecclesiastical
writers headed by TertuUian and C)rprian, and even to a
modified degree in Augustine himself. He was bom in
the Roman colony of Cirta, probably a few years after the
death of Quintilian. He rose to a conspicuous position at
Rome under Hadrian, and was highly esteemed by Marcus
Antoninus, who not only elevated him to the consulship,
but made him one of the principal tutors of the joint-heirs
to the Empire, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. He
died a few years before Marcus Aurelius. The recovered
fragments of his writings, which are lamentably scanty and
interrupted, are chiefly from his correspondence with his
two imperial pupils. With both of them, and Marcus
Aurelius especially, he continued in later years to be on
the most intimate and affectionate relations. The elderly
rhetorician, a martyr, as he keeps complaining, to gout, and

v.] Fronto. 235

the philosophic Emperor write to each other with the
effusiveness of two school-girls. It is impossible to suspect
Marcus Aurelius of insincerity, and it is easy to understand
what a real fervour of admiration his saintly character might
awaken in any one who had the privilege of watching and
aiding its development ; but the endearments exchanged in
the letters that pass between " my dearest master " and
" my life and lord " are such as modern taste finds it hard
to sympathise with, or even to understand.

The single cause for complaint that Fronto had against
his pupil was that, as he advanced in life, he gradually
withdrew from the study of literature to that of philosophy.
To Fronto, hterature was the one really important thing in
the world; and in his perpetual recurrence to this theme,
he finds occasion to lay down in much detail his own
literary theories and his canons of style. The Elocuiio
Novella^ which he considered it his great work in life to
expound and to practise, was partly a return upon the
style of the older Latin authors, partly a new growth
based, as theirs had been, on the actual language of
common life. The prose of Cato and the Gracchi had
been, in vocabulary and structure, the living spoken
language of the streets and farms, wrought into shape
in the hands of men of powerful genius. To give fresh
vitality to Latin, Fronto saw, and saw rightly, that the
same process of literary genius working on living material
must once more take place. His mistake was in fancy-
ing it possible to go back again to the second century
before Christ, arid make a fresh start from that point as
though nothing had happened in the meantime. In our
own age we have seen a somewhat similar fallacy committed
by writers who, in their admiration of the richness and
flexibihty of Elizabethan English, have tried to write with
the same copiousness of vocabulary and the same freedom
of structure as the Elizabethans. Between these and their
object lies an insuperable barrier, the formed and finished

236 Latin Literature, [III.

prose of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ; between
Fronto and his lay the whole mass of what, in the sustained
and secure judgment of mankind, is the classical prose
of the Latin language, from Cicero to Tacitus. In the
simplicity which he pursued there was something ineradi-
cably artificial, and even unnatural, and the fresh resources
from which he attempted to enrich the literary language
and to form his new Latin resembled, to use his own
striking simile, the exhausted and unwilling population from
which the legions could only now be recruited by the most
drastic conscription.

Yet if Fronto hardly succeeded in founding a new Latin,
he was a powerful influence in the final collapse and dis-
appearance of the old. His reversion to the style and
language of pre-Ciceronian times was only a temporary
fashion ; but in the general decay of taste and learning it
was sufficient to break the continuity of Latin literature.
The bronze age of Ennius and Cato had been succeeded,
in a broad and stately development, by the Golden and
Silver periods. Under this fresh attack the Latin of the
Silver Age breaks up and goes to pieces, and the failure of
Fronto and his contemporaries to create a new language
opens the age of the base metals. The collapse of the
imperial system after the death of Marcus Aurelius is not
more striking or more complete than the collapse of litera-
ture after that of his tutor.

Of the actual literary achievement of this remarkable
critic, when he turned from criticism and took to construc-
tion, the surviving fragments give but an imperfect idea.
Most of the fragments are from private letters ; the rest are
from rhetorical exercises, including those of the so-called
Principia Historiae, a panegyric upon the campaigns and
administration of Verus in the Asiatic provinces. But among
the letters there are some of a more studied eloquence,
which show pretty clearly the merits and defects of their
author as a writer. In narrative he is below mediocrity :

v.] Front o. 237

his attempt to tell the story of the ring of Polycrates, after
all allowance is made for its having been first told by
Herodotus, is incredibly languid and tedious. Where his
style reaches its highest level of force and refinement is
in the more imaginative passages, and in the occasional
general reflections where he makes the thought remarkable
by a cadence of language that is at once unexpected and
inevitable. Novissimum homini sapientiam colenti amiculum
estgloriae cupido : id novissimum exuitir — the turn of phrase
here is completely different from the way in which Cicero
or Quintilian would have expressed the same idea. In
the long letter urging the Emperor to take a brief rest
from the wearing cares of government during a few days
that he was spending at a little seaside town in Etruria,
there occurs what is, perhaps, the most characteristic single
passage that could be quoted, the allegory of the Creatioi)
of Sleep. " Now," he writes, " if you would like to hear a
little fable, listen." The fable which he proceeds to relate,
in its delicacy of phrasing and its curiously romantic flavour,
has received an admirable and sympathetic rendering from
the late Mr. Pater.* Part of his version — the passage is
too long to quote in full — will show more clearly than
abstract criticism the distinctively romantic or mediaeval
note which, except in so far as it had been anticipated by
the genius of Plato and Virgil, appears now in literature
almost for the first time.

" They say that our father Jupiter, when he ordered the '
world at the beginning, divided time into two parts exactly
equal ; the one part he clothed with light, the other with
darkness ; he called them Day and Night ; and he assigned
rest to the night and to the day the work of Hfe. At that
time Sleep was not yet bom, and men passed the whole of
their lives awake : only, the quiet of the night was ordained
for them, instead of sleep. But it came to pass, little by
little, being that the minds of men are restless, that they

. Marius the Epicurean^ chap, xiii

6\;'

238 Lati7i Literature, [III.

carried on their business alike by night as by day, and gave
no part at all to repose. . . . Then it was that Jupiter formed
the design of creating Sleep; and he added him to the
number of the gods, and gave him the charge over night and
rest, putting into his hands the keys of human eyes. With
his own hands he mingled the juices wherewith Sleep should
soothe the hearts of mortals — herb of Enjoyment and herb
of Safety, gathered from a grove in Heaven ; and, from the
meadows of Acheron, the herb of Death ; expressing from
it one single drop only, no bigger than a tear that one
might hide. 'With this juice,* he said, ' pour slumber upon
the eyelids of mortals. So soon as it hath touched them
they will lay themselves down motionless, under thy power.
But be not afraid : they will revive, and in a while stand
up again upon their feet.' After that, Jupiter gave wings to
Sleep, attached, not to his heels like Mercury's, but to his
shoulders like the wings of Love. For he said, * It becomes
thee not to approach men's eyes as with the noise of a
chariot and the rushing of a swift courser, but with placid
and merciful flight, as upon the wings of a swallow — nay !
not so much as with the fluttering of a dove.' "

Alike in the naive and almost childlike simplicity of its
general structure, and in its minute and intricate ornament,
like that of a diapered wall or a figured tapestry, where
hardly an inch of space is ever left blank — this new style is
much more akin to the manner of the thirteenth or four-
teenth century than to the classical. A similar quality is
shown, not more strikingly, but on a larger scale and with a
more certain touch, in the celebrated prose romance of
Fronto's contemporary, Lucius Apuleius.

Like Fronto, Apuleius was of African origin. He was
born at the Roman colony of Madaura in Numidia, and
educated at Carthage, from which he proceeded afterwards
to the university of Athens. The epithets of semi-Numida
and semi-GaetuluSy which he applies to himself, indicate
that he fully felt himself to belong to a civilisation which

v.] Apuleius, 239

was not purely European. Together with the Graeco-Syrian
Lucian, this Romano-African represents the last extension'
which ancient' culture took before finally fading away or
becoming absorbed in new forms. Both were by profession
travelling lecturers ; they were the nearest approach which
the ancient world made to what we should now call the
higher class of journalist. Lucian, in his later life — like a
journalist nowadays who should enter Parliament — com-
bined his profession with high public employment; but
Apuleius, so far as is known, spent all his life in writing and
lecturing. Though he was not strictly either an orator or a
philosopher, his works include both speeches and philosoph-
ical treatises ; but his chief distinction and his permanent
interest are as a novelist both in the literal aftd in the
accepted sense of the word — a writer of prose romances in
which he carried the novella elocutio to the highest point it
reached. He was bom about the year 125 ; the Meta-
tnorphoseSy his most famous and his only extant romance,
was written at Rome before he was thirty, soon after he
had completed his course of study at Athens. The philo-
sophical or mystical treatises of his later life. On the
Universe, On the God of Socrates , On Plato and his Doctrine,
do not rise above the ordinary level of the Neo-Platonist
school, Platonism half understood, mixed with fanciful
Orientalism, and enveloped in a maze of verbiage. That
known as the Apologia, an elaborate literary amplification
of the defence which he had to make before the proconsul
of Africa against an accusation of dealing in magic, is the
only one which survives of his oratorical works; and his
miscellaneous writings on many branches of science and
natural history, which are conjectured to have formed a sort
of encyclopedia like those of Celsus and Pliny, are all but
completely lost: but the Florida, a collection, probably
made by himself, of twenty-four selected passages from the
public lectures which he delivered at Carthage, give an idea
of his style as a lecturer, and of the scope and variety of

240 Latin Literature. [IIL

his talent. The Ciceronian manner of Quintilian and his
school has now completely disappeared. The new style
may remind one here and there of Seneca, but the re-
semblance does not go far. Fronto, who speaks of Cicero
with grudging ,and lukewarm praise, regards Seneca as on
the whole the most corrupt among Roman writers, and
Apuleius probably held the same view. He produces his
rhetorical effects, not by daring tropes or accumulations of
sonorous phrases, but by a perpetual refinement of diction
which keeps curiously weighing and rejecting words, and
giving every other word an altered value or an unaccustomed
setting. The effect is like that of strange and rather
barbarous jewellery. A remarkable passage, on the power
of sight possessed by the eagle, may be cit^d as a charac-
teristic specimen of his more elaborate manner. Quum
se nubiutn tenus altissime sublimavit^ he writes, evecta alis
totum istud spatium^ qua pluitur et ningitur, ultra quod
cacumen nee fulmini nee fulguri locus est^ in ipso, ut ita
dixerim, solo aetheris et fastigio hiemis . . . nutu clementi
laevorsum vel dextrorsum tota mole corporis labitur . . . inde
cuncta despicienSy ibidem pinnarum eminus indefesso remigio^
ac paulisper cunctabundo volatu paene eodemloco pendula cir-
cumtuetur et quaerit quorsus potissimum inpraedam supemese
proruat fulminis vicey de ca^lo improvisa simul campis pecua^
simul montibus feraSy simul urbibus homines y uno obtutu sub
eodem impetu cemens. The first thing that strikes a reader
accustomed to classical Latin in a passage Uke this is the
short broken rhythms, the simple organism of archaic prose
being artificially imitated by carefully and deliberately
breaking up all the structure which the language had
been wrought into through the handling of centuries. The
next thing is that half the phrases are, in the ordinary sense
of the word, barely Latin. Apuleius has all the daring,
though not the genius, of Virgil himself in inventing new
Latin or using old Latin in new senses. But Virgil is old
Latin to him no less than Ennius or Pacuvius ; in this very

v.] Apuleius. 241

passage, with its elaborate archaisms, there are three phrases
taken directly from the first book of the Aeneid.

In the Metamorphoses the elaboration of the new style
culminates. In its main substance this curious and fantastic
romance is a translation from a Greek original. Its precise
relation to the version of the same story, extant in Greek
under the name of Lucian, has given rise to much argu-
ment, and the question cannot be held to be conclusively
settled ; but the theory which seems to have most in its
favour is that both are versions of a lost Greek original.
Lucian applied his limpid style and his uncommon power
of narration to rewrite what was no doubt a ruder and
more confused story. Apuleius evidently took the story as
a mere groundwork which he might overlay with his own
fantastic embroidery. He was probably attracted to it by
the supernatural element, which would appeal strongly to
him, not merely as a professed mystic and a dabbler in
magic, but as a decadent whose art sought out strange ex-
periences and romantic passions no less than novel rhythms
and exotic diction. Under the light touch of Lucian the
supematuralism of the story is merely that of a fairy-tale,
not believed in or meant to be believed; in the Meta-
morphoses a brooding sense of magic is over the whole
narrative. In this spirit he entirely remodels the conclusion
of the story. The whole of the eleventh book, from the
vision of the goddess, with which it opens, to the reception
of the hero at the conclusion into the fellowship of her
holy servants, is conceived at the utmost tension of mystical
feeling. " With stars and sea-winds in her raiment," flower-
crowned, shod with victorious palm, clad, under the dark
splendours of her heavy pall, in shimmering white silk shot
with saflron and rose like flame, an awful figure rises out
of the moonlit sea: En adsum, comes her voice, rerum
natura parens^ elementorum omnium domina, seculorum
progenies initialis, summa numinum, regina manium, prima
caelitumy deorum dearumque fades uni/ormis, quae caeU

2/^2 Latin Literature. [III.

luminosa culmina, maris salubria flamina^ inferorum de-
plorata silentia nuHbus meis dispenso. It was in virtue of
such passages as that from which these words are quoted
that Apuleius came to be regarded soon after his death as
an incarnation of Antichrist, sent to perplex the worshippers
of the true God. Already to Lactantius he is not a curious
artist in language, but a magician inspired by diabolical
agency; St. Augustine tells us that, like ApoUonius of
Tyana, he was set up by religious paganism as a rival to
Jesus Christ.

Of the new elements interwoven by Apuleius in the story
of the transformations and adventures of Lucius of Patrae
(Lucius of Madaura, he calls him, thus hinting, to the
mingled awe and confusion of his readers, that the events
had happened to himself), the fervid religion of the con-
clusion is no doubt historically the most important; but
that which made it universal and immortal is the famous
story of Cupid and Psyche^ which fills nearly two books of
the Metamorphoses, With the strangeness characteristic
of the whole work, this wonderful and exquisitely told story
is put in the mouth of a half crazy and drunken old woman,
in the robbers* cave where part of the action passes. But
her first half-dozen words, the errant in ' quadam civitate rex
et regina, lift it in a moment into the golden world of pure
romance. The story itself is in its constituent elements a
well-known specimen of the Ihdrcheny or popular tale, which
is not only current throughout the Aryan peoples, but may
be traced in the popular mythology of all primitive races.
It is beyond doubt in its essential features of immemorial
antiquity ; but what is unique about it is its sudden appear-
ance in literature in the full flower of its most elaborate
perfection. Before Apuleius there is no trace of the story
in Greek or Roman writing; he tells it with a daintiness
of touch and a wealth of fanciful ornament that have left
later story-tellers little or nothing to add. The version by
which it is best known to modern readers, that in the

v.] The Pervigilium Veneris. 243

Earthly Paradise^ while, after the modem poet's manner,
expanding the descriptions for their own sake, follows
Apuleius otherwise with exact fidelity.

In the more highly wrought episodes, like the Cupid and
Psyche^ the new Latin of Apuleius often approximates
nearly to assonant or rhymed verse. Both rhyme and
assonance were to be found in the early Latin which he
had studied deeply, and may be judged from incidental
fragments of the popular language never to have wholly
disappeared from common use during the classical period.
Virgil, in his latest work, as has been noticed, shows a
tendency to experiment in combining their use with that
of the Graeco-Latin rhythms. The combination, in the
writing of the new school, of a sort of inchoate verse with
an elaborate and even pedantic prose was too artificial to
be permanent; but about the same time attempts were
made at a corresponding new style in regular poetry.
Rhymed verse as such does not appear till later ; the work
of the novelli poetae, as they were called by the grammarians,
partly took the form of reversion to the trochaic metres
which were the natural cadence of the Latin language,
partly of fresh experiments in hitherto untried metres, in
both cases with a large employment of assonance, and the
beginnings of an accentual as opposed to a quantitative
treatment. Of these experiments few have survived; the
most interesting is a poem of remarkable beauty preserved
in the Latin Anthology under the name of the Pervigilium
Veneris, Its author is unknown, nor can its date be de-
termined with certainty. The worship of Venus Genetrix,
for whose spring festival the poem is written, had been
revived on a magnificent scale by Hadrian ; and this fact,
together with the internal evidence of the language, make it
assignable with high probability to the age of the Antonines.
The use of the preposition de^ almost as in the Romance
languages, where case-inflexions would be employed in
classical Latin, has been held to argue an African origin;

244 Latin Literature. [III.

while its remarkable mediaevalisms have led some critics,
against all the other indications, to place its date as )fi^^^
the fourth or even the fifth century. ^

The Pervigilium Veneris is written in the trochaic septe-
narian verse which had been fi-eely used by the earliest
Roman poets, but had since almost dropped out of literary
use. With the revival of the trochaic movement the long
divorce between metrical stress and spoken accent begins
to break down. The metre is indeed accurate, and even
rigorous, in its quantitative structure; but instead of the
prose and verse stresses regularly clashing as they do in
the hexameter or elegiac, they tend broadly towards coin-
ciding, and do entirely coincide in one-third of the Unes of
the poem. We are on the very verge of the accentual
Latin poetry of the Middle Ages, and the affinity is made
closer by the free use of initial and terminal assonances,
and even of occasional rhyme. The use of stanzas with
a recurring refrain was not unexampled ; Virgil, following
Theocritus and Catullus, had employed the device with
singular beauty in the eighth Eclogue; but this is the first
known instance of the refrain being added to a poem in
stanzas of a fixed and equal length ; it is more than half-
way towards the structure of an eleventh-century Provencal
alba. The keen additional pleasure given by rhyme was
easily felt in a language where accidental rhymes come so
often as they do in Latin, but the rhyme here, so far as
there is any, is rather incidental to the way in which the
language is used, with its silvery chimes and recurrences,
than sought out for its own sake; there is more of* actual
rhyming in some of the prose of Apuleius. The refirain
itself—

Cras amet qui nunquam amavit^ quique amavitcras amet —

* In the poem as it has come down to us the refrain comes in at
irregular intervals; but the most plausible reconstitution of a some-
what corrupt and disordered text makes it recur after every fourth line,
thus making up the twenty-two stanzas mentioned in the title.

v.] The Pervigilium Veneris, 245

has its internal recurrence, the folding back of the -musical
phrase upon itself; and as it comes over and over again
it seems to set the whole poem swaying to its own music.
In one of the most remarkable of his lyrics (like this poem,
a song of spring), Tennyson has come very near, as near
perhaps as it is possible to do in words, towards explaining
the actual process through which poetry comes into exist-
ence : The fairy fancies range, and lightly stirred, Ring little
bells of change from word to word. In the Pervigilium
Veneris with its elaborate simplicity — partly a conscious
literary artifice, partly a real reversion to the childhood of
poetical form — this process is, as it were, laid bare before
our eyes ; the ringing phrases turn and return, and expand
and interlace and fold in, as though set in motion by a
strain of music.

Cras amet qui nunquam amavity quique amavit eras amet;
Ver novum, ver iam canorum, ver renatus orbis est;
Vere concordant amores, vere nubunt alites
Et nemus comam resolvit de maritis imbribus :

Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit cras
amet —

in these lines of clear melody the poem opens, and the
rest is all a series of graceful and florid variations or em-
broideries upon them ; the first line perpetually repeating
itself through the poem like a thread of gold in the pattern
or a phrase in the music. In the soft April night the
tapering flame- shaped rosebud, soaked in warm dew, swells
out and breaks into a fire of crimson at dawn.

Facta Cypridis de cruore deque Amoris osculo
Deque gemmis deque flammis deque solis purpuris
Cras ruborem qui latebat veste tectus ignea
Unico marita nodo non pudebit solvere.

Flower-garlanded and myrtle-shrouded, the Spring wor-
jghipper? go dancing through the fields that break before

246 Latin Literature, [III.

them into a sheet of flowers ; among them the boy Love
goes, without his torch and his arrows ; amid gold-flowered
broom, under trees unloosening their tresses, in myrtle-
thicket and poplar shade, the whole land sings with the
voices of innumerable birds. Then with a sudden sob the
pageant ceases : —

lUa cantat, nos tacemus : quando ver venit tneum f
Quando fiam uti chelidon ut tacere desinam ?

A second spring, in effect, was not to come for poetry
till a thousand years later; once more then we hear the
music of this strange poem, not now in the clear bronze
utterance of a mature and magnificent language, but faintly
and haltingly, in immature forms that yet have notes of new
and piercing sweetness.

Bels dous amicXyfassam unjoc navel
Ins eljardi on chanton it auzel —

so it rings out in Southern France, " in an orchard under
the whitethorn leaf;" and in England, later, but yet a
century before Chaucer, the same clear note is echoed,
bytuene Mershe ant Avert!, whan spray biginetk to spring.

But in the Roman Empire under the Antonines the soil,
the race, the language, were alike exhausted. The anarchy
of the third century brought with it the wreck of the whole
fabric of civilisation ; and the new religion, already widely
diffused and powerful, was beginning to absorb into itself
on all sides the elements of thought and emotion which
♦ended towards a new joy and a living art.

VI.

'ZARLV LATIN CHRISTIANITY: MDTUCIUS FELIX, TERTULUAN,

LACTANTIUS.

The new religion was long in adapting itself to literary
form ; and if, between the era of the Antonines and that of
Diocletian, a century passes in which all the important
literature is Christian, this is rather due to the general
decay of art and letters, than to any high literary quality
in the earlier patristic writing. Christianity began. among ^
the lojver classes, and in the Greek-speaking provinces of
the Empire ; after it reached Rome, and was diffused through
the Western provinces, it remained for a long time a some-
what obscure sect, confined, in the first instance, to the
small Jewish or Graeco-Asiatic colonies which were to be
found in all centres of commerce, and spreading from them
among the uneducated urban populations. The persecution
of Nero was directed against obscure people, vaguely known
as a sort of Jews, and the martyrdom of the two great
apostles was an incident that passed without remark and
almost without notice. Tacitus dismisses the Christians in
a few careless words, and evidently classes the new religion
with other base Oriental superstitions as hardly worth
serious mention. The well-known correspondence between
Pliay and Trajan, on the subject of the repressive measures: , ^
to be taken against the Christians of Bithynia, indicated
that Christianity, had, by the beginning of the second
century, taken a large and firm footing, in the Etsters^

247

248 Latin Literature, [III.

provinces ; but it is not till a good many years later that we
have any certain indication of its obtaining a hold on the
educated classes. The legend of the conversion of Statius
seems to be of purely mediaeval origin. Flavins Clemens, the
cousin of the Emperor Domitian, executed on the ground
of " atheism " during the year of his consulship, is claimed,
though without certainty, as the earliest Christian mart)n: of
high rank. Even in the middle of the second century, the
Church of Rome mainly consisted of people who could
barely speak or write Latin. Thei. Muratorian fragment,
the earliest Latin Christian document, which general
opinion dates within a few years of the death of Marcus
Aurelius, and which is part of an extremely important
official list of canonical writings issued by the authority of
the Roman Church, is barbarous in construction and diction.
It is in the reign of Commodus, amid the wreck of all other
literatrre, that we come on the first Christian authors.
Victor, Bishop of Rome from the year 186, is mentioned by
Jerome as the first author of theological treatises in Latin ;
taken together with his attempt to excommunicate the
Asiatic Churches on the question, already a burning one,
of the proper date of keeping Easter, this shows that the
Latin Church was now gaining independent force and
vitality.

Two main streams may be traced in the Christian litera-
ture which begins with the reign of Commodus. On the
one hand, there is what may be called the African school,
writing in the new Latin ; on the other, the Italian school,
which attempted to mould classical Latin to Christian use.
The former bears a close affinity in style to Apuleius, or,
rather, to the movement of which Apuleius was the most
remarkable product ; the latter succeeds to Quintilian and
his contemporaries as the second impulse of Ciceronianism.
The two opposing methods appear at their sharpest contrast
in the earliest authors of each, TertuUian and Minucius
'Felix. The vast preponderance of the former, alike in volume

VI.] Minucws Felix. 249

of production and fire of eloquence, offers a suggestive
parallel to the comparative importance of the two schools
in the history of ecclesiastical Latin. Throughout the
third and fourth centuries the African school continues to
predominate, but it takes upon itself more of the classical
finish, and tames the first ferocity of its early manner.
Cyprian inclines more to the style of Tertullian ; Lactantius,
"the Christi an Cic ero," reverts strongly towards the classical
forms : and finally, towards the end of the fourth century,
the two languages arc combined by Augustine, in propor-
tions which, throughout the Middle Ages, form the accepted
type of the language of Latin Christianity.

In a fine passage at the opening of the fifth book of his
Institutes of Divinity^ Lactantius regrets the imperfect
literary support given to Christianity by his two eminent
predecessors. The ob scur ity and harsh^^gg nf "y^ffnllian,
he says (and to this may be added his Montanism, which
fluctuated on the edge of heresy), prevent him from being
read or esteemed as widely as his great literary power
deserves ; while Minucius, in hi^single treatise, the Octavius,
gave a brilliant specimen of his grace and power as a
Christian apologist, but did not carry out the task to its full
scope. This last treatise is, indeed, of unique interest, not
only as a fine, if partial, vindication of the new religion,
but as the single writing of the age. Christian or pagan,
which in style and diction follows the classical tradition,
and almost reaches the classical standard. As to the life
of its author, nothing is known beyond the scanty indica-
tions given in the treatise itself. Even his date is not
wholly certain, and, while the reign of Commodus is his
most probable period, Jerome appears to allude to him as
later than Tertullian, and some modem critics incline to
place the work in the reign of Alexander Severus.

The Octavius is a dialogue in the Ciceronian manner,
showing especially a close study of the De Natura
Deorum, A brief and graceful introduction gives an

* - * •»

250 Latin Literature, [III.

account of the scene of the dialogue. The narrator^ with
his two friends, Octavius and Caecilius, the former a
Christian, the latter a somewhat wavering adherent of the
old faith, are taking a walk on the beach near Ostia on
a beautiful autumn morning, watching the little waves
lapping on the sand, and boys playing duck-and- drake
with pieces of tile, when Caecilius kisses his hand, in the
ordinary pagan usage, to an image of Serapis which they
pass. The incident draws them on to a theological dis-
cussion. Caecilius sets forth the argument against Christi-
anity in detail, and Octavius replies to him point by point ;
at the end, Caecilius professes himself overcome, and
declares his adhesion to the faith of his friend. Both in
the attack and in the defence it is only the rational side of
the new doctrine which is at issue. The unity of God, the
resurrection of the body, and retribution in a future state,
make up the sum of Christisyiity as it is presented. The
name of Christ is not onte mentioned, nor is his divinity
directly asserted. There is no allusion to the sacraments,
or to the doctrine of the Redemption ; and Octavius neither
quotes from nor refers to the writings of either Old or New
Testament. Among early Christian writings, this method
of treatment is unexampled elsewhere. The work is an
attempt to present the new religion to educated opinion as
a reasonable philosophic system ; as we read it, we might
be in the middle of the eighteenth century. With this
temperate rationalism is combined a clearness and purity
of diction, founded on the Ciceronian style, but without
Cicero's sumptuousness of structure, that recalls the best
prose of the Silver Age.

The author of the Octavius was a lawyer, who practised
in the Roman courts. The literary influence of Quintilian
no doubt lasted longer among the legal profession, for
whose guidance he primarily wrote, than among the gram-
marians and journalists, who represent in this age the
general tendency of the world of letters. But even in the

VI.] Tertullian, 251

legal profession the new Latin had established itself, and,
except in the capital, seems to have almost driven out the
classical manner. Its most remarkable exponent among
Christian writers was, up to the time of his conversion,
a pleader in the Carthaginian law-courts.

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus was born at
Carthage towards the end of the reign of Antoninus Pius.
When he was a young man, the fame of Apuleius as a
writer and lecturer was at i^^ height ; and though Tertullian
himself never mentions him (as Apuleius, on his side, never
refers in specific term^ to the Christian religion) , they must
have been well known to each other, and their antagonism
is of the kind which grows out of strong similarities of
nature. Apuleius passed for a magician : Tertullian was
a firm believer in magic, and his conversion to Christianity
was, he himself tells us, very largely due to confessions of
>ts truth extorted from demons, at the strange spiritualistic
seances which were a feature of the time among all classes.
His conversion took place in the last year of Commodus.
The tension between the two ifeligions — for in Africa, at all
events, the old and the new were followed with equally fiery
enthusiasm — had already reached breaking point. A
heathen mob, headed by the priestesses of the Mater et
Virgo Caelestis, the object of the ecstatic worship afterwards
transferred to the mother of Christ, had two or three years
before besieged the proconsul of Africa in his own house
because he refused to order a general massacre of the
Christians. In the anarchy after the assassination of Com-
modus, the persecution broke out, and continued to rage
throughout the reign of Septimius Severus. It was in these
years that Tertullian poured forth the series of apologetic
and controversial writings whose fierce enthusiasm and im-
petuous eloquence open the history of Latin Christianity.
The Apologeticum, the greatest of his earlier works, and,
upon the whole, his masterpiece, was composed towards
the beginning of this persecution, in the last years of the

252 Latin Literature. [III.

second century. The terms in which its purport is stated,
Quod religio Christiana damnanda non sity nisi qualis sit
prius inteUigatury might lead one to expect a grave and
reasoned defence of the new doctrine, like that of the
Octavius, But Tertullian*s strength is in attack, not in
defence ; and his apology passes almost at once into a fierce
indictment of paganism, painted in all the gaudiest colours
of African rhetoric. Towards the end, he turns violently
upon those who say that Christianity is merely a system of
philosophy : and writers like Minucius are included with
the eclectic pagan schoolmen in his condemnation. Here,
for the first time, the position is definitely taken which has
since then had so vast and varied an influence, that the
Holy Scriptures are the source of all wisdom, and that the
poetry and philosophy of the Graeco-Roman world were
alikfe derived or perverted from the inspired writings of the
Old Testament. Moses was five hundred years before
Homer; and therefore, runs his grandiose and sweeping
fallacy, Homer is derived from the books of Moses. The
argument, strange to say, has lived almost into our own
day.

In thus breaking with heathen philosophy and poetry,
TertuUian necessarily broke with the literary traditions of
Europe for a thousand years. The Holy Scriptures, as a
canon of revealed truth, became incidentally but inevitably
a canon of Hterary style likewise. Writings soaked in
quotations from the Hebrew poets and prophets could not
but be affected by th|ir style through and through. A
current Latin translation of the Old and New Testament —
the so-called ItalUy which itself only survives as the ground-
work of later versions — had already been made, and was in
wide use. Its rude literal fidelity imported into Christian
Latin an enormous mass of Grecisms and Hebraisms — the
latter derived from the original writings, the former from
the Septuagint version of the Old Testament — which
combined with its free use of popular language and its

JSSSSSSmSSSSmm^^^!^

VI.] Tertullian, 253

relaxed grammar to force the new Latin further and further
away from the classical tradition. The new religion, though
it met its educated opponents in argument and outshone
them in rhetorical embellishment, still professed, after the
example of its first founders, to appeal mainly to the simple
and the poor. " Stand forth, O soul ! " cries TertuUian in
another treatise of the same period ; " I appeal to thee, not
as wise with a wisdom formed in the schools, trained in
libraries, or nourished in Attic academy or portico, but as
simple and rude, without polish or culture; such as thou
art to those who have thee only, such as thou art in the
cross-road, the highway, the dockyard."

In the ardour of its attacks upon the heathen civilisation,
the rising Puritanism of the Church bore hard upon the
whole of culture. As against the theatre and the gladiatorial
games, indeed, it occupied an unassailable position. The^e
is a grim and characteristic humour in Tertullian's story of
the Christian woman who went to the theatre and came
back from it possessed with a devil, and the devil's crushing
reply, In meOf^eam inveniy to the expostulation of" the
exorcist ; a nobler passion rings in his pleading against the
butcheries of the amphitheatre, "Do you wish to see
blood ? Behold Christ's ! " His declamations against
worldly luxury and ornament in the sumptuous pages
of the De Cidtu Feminarum are not more sweeping or
less sincere than those of Horace or Juvenal; but the
violent attack made on education and on literature itself in
the De Idololatria shows the growth of that persecuting
spirit which, as it gathered material force, destroyed ancient
art and literature wherever it found them, and which led
Pope Gregory, four hundred years later, to bum the
magnificent library founded by Augustus. Nos sumus in
quos decucurrerunt fines seculorum, " upon us the ends of the
world are come," is the burden of Tertullian's impassioned
argument. What were art and letters to those who waited,
from moment to moment, for the glory of the Second

254 Latin Literature, [III.

Coming? Yet for ten years or more he continued to pour
forth his own brilliant essays ; and while the substance of his
teaching becomes more and more harsh and vindictive, the
force of his rhetoric, his command over irony and invective,
the gorgeous richness of his vocabulary, remain as striking
as ever. In the strange and often romantic psychology of
the De Animay and in the singular clothes-philosophy of the
De PaUiOy he appears as the precursor of Swedenborg and
Teufelsdrockh. A remarkable passage in the former treatise,
in which he speaks of the growing pressure of over-population
in the Empire, against which wars, famines, and pestilences
had become necessary if unwelcome remedies, may lead us
to reconsider the theory, now largely accepted, that the
Roman Empire decayed and perished for want of men.
With the advance of years his growing antagonism to the
Catholic Church is accompanied by a further hardening of
his style. The savage Puritanism of the De Monogamid
and De leiunio is couched in a scholastic diction where the
tradition of culture is disappearing; and in the gloomy
ferocity of the De Pudicitia, probably the latest of his
extant works, he comes to a final rupture alike with
Catholicism and with humane letters^

The African school of patristic writers, of which TertuUian
is at once the earliest and the most imposing figure, and of
which he was indeed to a large degree the direct founder,
continued for a century after his death to include the main
literary production of Latin Christianity. Thascius Caecilius
Cyprianus, Bishop of Carthage from the year 248, though
a pupil and an admirer of TertuUian, reverts in his own
writings at once to orthodoxy and to an easy and copious
diction. In earlier youth he had been a professor of
rhetoric ; after his conversion in mature life, he gave up all
his wealth to the poor, and devoted his great literary gifts to
apologetic and hortatory writings. He escaped the Decian
persecution by retiring from Carthage; but a few years
later he was executed in the renewed outbreak of judicial

VI.] Cyprian and Lactantius. 255

massacres which sullied the short and disastrous reign of
Valerian. Forty years after Cyprian's death the rhetorician
Amobius of Sicca in Numidia renewed the attack on pagan-
ism, rather than the defence or exposition of Christianity,
in the seven books Adversus Nationes, which he is said to
have written as a proof of the sincerity of his conversion.
"Uneven and ill-proportioned," in the phrase of Jerome,
this work follows neither the elaborate rhetoric of the early
African school, nor the chaster and more polished style of
Cyprian, but rather renews the inferior and slovenly manner
of the earlier antiquarians and encyclopedists. A free use
of the rhetorical figures goes side by side with a general
want of finish and occasional lapses into solecism. His
literary gift is so small, and his knowledge of the religion
he professes to defend so slight and so excessively inaccurate,
that theologians and men of letters for once agree that his
main value consists in the fragments of antiquarian informa-
tion which he preserves. But he has a fiirther claim to
notice as the master of a celebrated pupil.

Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, a name eminent
among patristic authors, and not inconsiderable in humane
letters, had, like Cyprian, been a professor of rhetoric, and
embraced Christianity in mature life. That he was a pupil
of Amobius is established by the testimony of Jerome ; his
African birth is only a doubtful inference from this fact.
Towards the end of the third century he established a
school at Nicomedia, which had practically become the
seat of empire under the rule of Diocletian; and from
there he was summoned to the court of Gaul to superintend
the education of Crispus,-the ill-fated son of Constantine.
The new religion had passed through its last and sharpest
persecution under Diocletian; now, of the two joint-
emperors Constantine openly favoured the Christians, and
Licinius had been forced to relax the hostility towards
them which he had at first shown. As it permeated the
court and saw the reins of government almost within its

256 Latin Literature, pil.

grasp, the Church naturally dropped some of the anathema-
tising spirit in which it had regarded art and literature in
the days of its earlier struggles. Lactantius brought to its
service a taste trained in the best literary tradition; and
while some doubt was cast on his dogmatic orthodoxy as
regards the precise definition of the Persons of the Trinity,
his pure and elegant diction was accepted as a model for
later writers. His greatest work, the seven books of the
Institutes of Divinityy was published a few years before
the victory of Constantine over Maxentius outside the
walls of Rome, which was the turning-point in the contest
between the two religions. It is an able exposition of
Christian doctrine in a style which, for eloquence, copi-
ousness, and refinement, is in the most striking contrast
to the wretched prose produced by contemporary pagan
writers. The influence of Cicero is obvious and avowed
throughout; but the references in the work show the
author to have been familiar with the whole range of the
Latin classics, poets as well as prose writers. Ennius,
the comedians and satirists, Virgil and Horace, are cited by
him freely; he even dares to praise Ovid. In his treatise
On Go(fs Workmanship — De Opificio Dei — the arguments
are often borrowed with the language from Cicero, but
Lucretius is also quoted and combated. The more
fanatical side of the new religion appears in the curious
work, De Mortibus Persecutorum^ written after Constantine
had definitely thrown in his lot with Christianity. It is
famous as containing the earliest record of the vision of
Constantine before the battle of the Mulvian Bridge ; and
its highly coloured account of the tragical fates of the
persecuting Emperors, from Nero to Diocletian, had a large
effect in fixing the tradition of the later Empire as viewed
throughout the Middle Ages. The long passionate pro-
test of the Church against heathen tyranny breaks out
here into equally passionate exultation ; the Roman Empire
is already seen, as it was later by St. Augustine, fading and

VI.] Commodianus, 257

crumbling away with the growth of the new and imperial
City of God.

Besides the large and continuous volume of its prose
production, the Latin ChUrch of the third century also
made its first essays in poetry. They are both rude and
scanty; it was not till late in the fourth century that
Christian poetry reached its full development in the hymns
of Ambrose and Prudentius, and the hexameter poems of
Paulinus of Nola. The province of Africa, fertile as it was
in prose writers, never produced a poet of any eminence.
The pieces in verse — they can hardly be called poems —
ascribed to Tertullian and Cyprian are forgeries of a late
period. But contemporary with them is an African verse
writer of curious linguistic interest, Commodianus. A
bishop of Marseilles, who wrote, late in the fifth century,
a continuation of St. Jerome's catalogue of ecclesiastical
writers, mentions his work in a very singular phrase :
"After his conversion," he says, "Commodianus wrote
a treatise against the pagans in an intermediate language
approximating to verse," mediocri sermone quasi versu. This
treatise, the Carmen Apologeticutn adversus ludaeos et GenieSy
is extant, together with other pieces by the same author.
It is a poem of over a thousand lines, which the allusions
to the Gothic war and the Decian persecution fix as
having been written in or very near the year 250. It is
written in hexameters, composed on a system which wavers
between the quantitative and accentual treatment. These
are almost evenly balanced. The poem is thus a document
of great importance in the history of the development of
mediaeval out of classical poetry. Though not, of course,
without his barbarisms, Commodianus was obviously neither
ignorant nor careless of the rules of classical versification,
some of which — iW instance, the strong caesura in the
middle of the third fbot — he retains with great strictness.
His peculiar prosody is plainly deliberate. Only a very
few lines are wholly quantitative, and none are wholly

258 Latin Literature. pil.

accentual, except where accent and quantity happen to
coincide. Much of the pronunciation of modem Italian
may be traced in his remarkable accentuation of some
words ; like Italian, he both throws back the accent off a
long syllable and slides it forward upon a short one.
Assonance is used freely, but there is not more rh)rming
than is usual in the poetry of the late empire. Not only in
pronunciation, but in grammatical inflexion, the beginnings
of Italian here and there appear. The case-forms of the
different declensions are beginning to run into one another :
the plural, for example, of insignis is no longer insignes, but,
as in Italian, insigni ; and the case-inflexions themselves
are dwindling away before the free use of prepositions,
which was already beginning to show itself, in the Pervigilium
Veneris,

Popular poetry was now definitely asserting itself along-
side of book-poetry formed on the classical model. But
authors who kept up a high literary standard in prose
continued to do so in verse also. The elegiac piece
De Ave Phoenice, found in early mediaeval collections under
the name of Lactantius, and accepted as his by recent
critics, is written in accurate and graceful elegiac couplets,
which are quite in accordance with the admiration Lac-
tantius, in his work On the Wrath of God, expresses for
Ovid. It is perhaps the earliest instance outside the field
of prose of the truce or coalition which was slowly form-
ing itself between the new religion and the old culture.
Beyond a certain faint and almost impalpable mysticism,
which hints at the legend of the Phoenix as symbolical
of the doctrine of the Resurrection, there is nothing in the
poem which is distinctively Christian. Phoebus and the
lyre of Cyllene are invoked, as they might be by a pagan
poet. But the language is from beginning to end full of
Christian or, at least, scriptural reminiscences, which could
only be possible to a writer familiar with the Psalter.
The description with which the poems opens of the Earthly

VI.] The Empire and the Church, 259

Paradise^ a " land east of the sun," where the bird has
its home, has mingled touches of the Elysium of Homer
and Virgil, and the New Jerusalem of the Revelation \ as
in the Psalms, the sun is a bridegroom coming out of
his chamber, and night and day are full of a language that
is not speech.

In the literary revival of the latter half of the fourth
century these tendencies have developed themselves, and
taken a more mature but a less interesting form. After
Christianity had become formally and irrevocably the State
religion, it took over what was left of Latin culture as
part of the chaotic inheritance which it had to^ccept
as the price for civil establishment. A heavy price was
paid on both sides when Constantine, in Dante's luminous
phrase, " turned the eagles." The Empire definitively
parted with the splendid administrative and political tra-
dition founded on the classical training and the Stoic
philosophy ; though shattered as it had been in the anarchy
of the third century, that was perhaps in any case irrecover-
able. The Church, on its side, drew away in the persons
of its leaders from its earlier tradition, with all that it
involved in the growth of a wholly new thought and art,
and armed or hampered itself with that classicalism from
which it never again got quite free. It is in the century
before Constantine, therefore, when old and new were in
the sharpest antagonism, and yet were both full of a
strange ferment — the ferment of dissolution in the one
case, in the other that of quickening — that the end of
the ancient world, and with it the end of Latin literature
as such, might reasonably be placed. But the first result
of the alliance between the Empire and the Church was
to give added dignity to the latter and renewed energy
to the former. The partial revival of letters in the fourth
century may induce us to extend the period of the ancient
Latin literature so far as to include Ausonius and Claudian as
legitimate, though remote^ successors of the Augustan poets*

VII. v^*^'' >^

Xta FOURTH CENTORY : ,AUSONIUS AND CLAUDIAN.

FoR^ full century after the death of Marcus Aurelius,
Latin literature was, apart from the Christian writers,
practically extinct. The authors of the least importance,
or whose names even are known to any but professional
scholars, may be counted on the fingers of one hand. The
stream of Roman law, the one guiding thread down those
dark ages, continued on its steady course. Papinian and
Ulpian, the two foremost jurists of the reigns of Septimius ^^
and Alexander Severus, bear a reputation as high as that
of any of their illustrious predecessors. Both rose to what
was in this century the highest administrative position in
the Empire, the prefecture of the praetorian guards.
Papinian, a native it seems of the Syrian town of Emesa,
and a kinsman of the Syrian wife of Septimius Severus, was
the author of numerous legal works, both in Greek and
Latin. Under Severus he was not only commander of the
household troops, but discharge4 what we should now call
the duties of Home Secretary. His genius for law was
united with an independence of judgment and a sense of
equity which rose beyond the limits of formal jurisprudence,
and made him one of the great humanising influences of
his profession. He was murdered, with circumstances of
great brutality, by the infamous Caracalla, almost immediately
after his accession to sole power. Domitius Ulpianus,
Papinian's successor as the head of Latin jurists, was also

260 Jl

VII.] Papinian and Ulpian: Sammonicus, 261

a Syrian by birth. Already an assessor to Papinian, and a
member of the imperial privy council, he was raised to the
praetorian prefecture and afterwards removed from it by
his countryman, the Emperor Heliogabalus, but reinstated
by Alexander Severus, under whom he was second ruler
of the Empire till killed in a revolt of the praetorian guards
in the year 228. He was succeeded in the prefecture by
Julius Paulus, a jurist of almost equal eminence, though
inferior to Ulpian in style and literary grace. Roman law
practically remained at the point where these three
eminent men left it, or only followed in their footsteps,
until its final systematisation under Justinian.

Beyond the field of law, such prose as was written in
this century was mainly Greek. The historical works of
Herodian and Dio Cassius, poor in quality as they are,
seem to have excelled anything written at the same time in
Latin. Their contemporary, Marius Maximus, continued
the series of biographies of the Emperors begun by Suetonius,
carr)dng it down from Nerva to Heliogabalus ; but the work,
such as it was, is lost, and is only known as the main source
used by the earlier compilers of the Augustan History,
Verse-making had fallen into the hands of inferior gram-
marians. Of their numerous productions enough survives
to indicate that a certain technical skill was not wholly lost.
The metrical treatises of Terentianus Maurus, a scholar of
the later years of the second century, show that the science
of metre was studied with great care, not only in its common
forms, but in the less familiar lyric measures. The didactic
poem on the art of medicine by Quintus Sammonicus
Serenus, the son of an eminent bibliophile, and the friend
of the Emperor Alexander Severus, though of little poetical
merit, is written in graceful and fluent verse. If of little
merit as poetry, it is of even less as science. Medicine
had sunk lower towards barbarism than versification, when
a sovereign remedy against fevers was described in these
polished lines : —

262 Latin Literature. piL

Inscribis chartae quod dicitur Abracadabraj
Saepius et subter repetis, sed detrahe summam
Et magis atque magis desint elementa figuris^
Singula quae semper rapies et cetera figes
Donee in angustum redigatur titera conum :
His lino nexis collum redimire memento.

Nor is his alternative remedy of a piece of coral hung round
the patient's neck much more rational The drop from the
science of Celsus is much more striking here than the drop
from the art of Celsus' contemporary Manilius. An inter-
mittent . imperial patronage of letters lingered on. The
elder and younger Gordian (the latter a pupil of Sammonicus'
father^ who bequeathed his immense hbrary to him) had
some reputation as writers. Clodius Albinus, the governor
of Britain who disputed the empire with Septimius Severus,
was a devoted admirer of Apuleius, and wrote romances in
a similar manner, which, according to his biographer, had
no inconsiderable circulation.

Under Diocletian and his successors there was a slight
and partial revival of letters, which chiefly showed itself on
the side of verse. The Cynegetica^ a. didactic poem on
hunting, by the Carthaginian poet Marcus Aurelius Olympius
Nemesianus, is, together with four bucolic pieces by the
same author, the chief surviving fragment of the main line
of Virgilian tradition. The Cynegetica, in spite of its good
taste and its excellent versification, is on the whole a dull
performance ; but in the other pieces, the pastoral form
gives the author now and then an opportunity of introducing
a little touch of the romantic tone which is partly imitated
from Virgil, but partly natural to the new Latin.

Perdit spina rosas nee semper lilia candent

Nee longum tenet uva comas nee populus umbras ;

Donum forma breve est, nee se quod commodet annis : —

in these graceful lines the copied Virgilian cadence i^

VII.] Tiberianus: the Augustan History, 263

united with the directness and the real or assumed simplicity
which belongs to the second childhood of Latin literature,
and which is so remarkable in the authors who founded the
new style. The new style itself was also largely practised,
but only a few scattered remnants survive. Tiberianus,
Count of Africa, Vicar of Spain, and praetorian prefect of
Gaul (the whole nomenclature of the Empire is now passing
from the Roman to the mediaeval type) under Constantine
the Great, is usually identified with the author of some qf
the most strikingly beautiful of these fragmentary pieces.
A descriptive passage, consisting of twenty lines of finely
written trochaics, reminds one of the Pervigilium Veneris in
the richness of its language .and the delicate simplicity of
its style. The last lines may be quoted for their singular
likeness to one of the most elaborately beautiful stanzas
of the Faerie Queene, that which describes the sounds
" consorted in one harmony " which Guy on hears in the
gardens of Acrasia : —

Has per umbras omnis ales plus canora quam puies
Cantibus vemis strepebat et susurris dulcibus :
Hie loquentis murmur amnis concinebat frondibus
Quas melos vocalis aurae, musa Zephyri, moverat:
Sic euntem per virecta pulcra odora et musica
Ales amnis aura. lucus.flos^et umbra iuverat.

The principal prose work, however, which has come down
from this age, shows a continued and even increased degra-
dation of style. The so-called Historia Augusta^ a series
of memoirs, in continuation of Suetonius* Lives of the Twelve
Caesars^ of the Roman Emperors from Hadrian to Numerian
(a.d. 117-284), was begun under Diocletian and finished
imder Constantine by six writers — Aelius Spartianus, Julius
Capitolinus, Vulcacius Gallicanus, Trebellius PoUio, Aelius
Lampridius, and Flavius Vopiscus. Most of them, if not
all, were officials of the imperial court, and had free access
to the registers of the senate as well as to more private

264 Latin Literature. [in.

sources of information. The extreme feebleness of the con-
tents of this curious work is only exceeded by the poverty
and childishness of the writing. History had sunk into a
collection of trivial gossip and details of court life, couched
in a language worthy of a second-rate chronicler of the Dark
Ages. The mere outward circumstances of the men whose
lives they narrated — the purpuraH Augustiy as one of the
authors calls them in a romantically sonorous phrase — were
indeed of world-wide importance^ and among the masses
of rubbish of which the memoirs chiefly consist there is
included much curious information and striking incident
But their main interest is in the light they throw on the
gradual sinking of the splendj^ administrative organisation
of the second century towards the sterile Chinese hierarchy
of the Byzantine Empire, and the concurrent degradation of
paganism, both as a political and a religious system.

Vopiscus, the last of the six authors, apologises, in draw-
ing the work to a close, for his slender literary power, and
expresses the hope that his material at least may be found
useful to some " eloquent man who may wish to unlock
the actions of princes." What he had in his mind was
probably not so much regular history as the paneg)aical
oratory which about this same time became a prominent
feature of the imperial courts, and gave their name to a
whole school of writers known as the Panegyrici. Gaul,
for a long time the rival of Africa as the nurse of judicial
oratory, was the part of the Empire where this new form
of literature was most assiduously cultivated. Up to the
age of Constantine, it had enjoyed practical immunity from
barbarian invasion, and had only had a moderate share of
the civil wars which throughout the third century desolated
all parts of the Empire. In wealth and civilisation, and in
the arts of peace, it probably held the foremost place among
the provinces. Marseilles, Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux,
Autun, Rheims, and Treves all possessed famous and
flourishing schools of oratory. The last-named town was

VII.] Ausonius. 265

after the supreme power had been divided among two or
more Augusti, a frequent seat of the imperial government
of the Western provinces, and, like Milan, became a more
important centre of public life than Rome. Of the extant
collection of panegyrics, two were delivered there before
Diocletian's colleague, the Emperor Maximianus. A florid
Ciceronianism was the style most in vogue, and the phrase-
ology, at least, of the old State religion was, until the
formal adoption of Christianity by the government, not
only retained, but put prominently forward. Eumenius of
Autun, the author of five or more pieces in the collection,
deUvered at dates between the years 297 and 311, is the
most distinguished figure of the group. His fluent and
ornate Latin may be read with some pleasure, though the
purpose of the orations leaves them little value as a record
of facts or a candid expression of opinions. Under the
influence of these nurseries of rhetoric a new Gallic school
of Christian writers rose and flourished during the fourth
century. Hilarius of Poitiers, the most eminent of the
Gallic bishops of this period, wrote controversial and
expository works in the florid involved style of the neo-
Ciceronian orators, which had in their day a high reputation.
As the first known author of Latin hymns, he is the pre-
cursor of Ambrose and Prudentitrs. Ambrose himself,
though as Bishop of Milan he belongs properly to the
Italian school of theological writers, was born and probably
educated at Treves. But the literature of the province
reached its highest point somewhat later, in one of the most
important authors of the century, Decimus Magnus Ausonius
of Bordeaux.

Ausonius was of Gallic blood by both parents ; he was
educated in grammar and rhetoric at the university of
Bordeaux, and was afterwards for many years professor of
both subjects at that of Treves. As tutor to Gratian, son
and successor of the Emperor Valentinian, he established
himself ii^ court favour, and fulfilled many high State officest

266 Latin Literature. \Uh

After Gradan was succeeded by Theodosius he retired to
a lettered ease near his native town, where he lived tiU
nearly the end of the century. His numerous poetical
works are of the most miscellaneous kind, ranging from
Christian hymns and elegies on deceased relations to trans-
lations from the Greek Anthology and centos from VirgiL
^mong them the volume of IdylUa constitutes his chief
claim to eminence, and gives him a high rank among the
later Latin poets. The gem of this collection is the &mous
Mosella, written at Treves about the year 370. The most
beautiful of purely descriptive Latin poems, it is unique in
the felicity with which it unites Viigilian rhythm and diction
with the new romantic sense of the beauties of nature.
The feeling for the charm of landscape which we had
occasion to note in the letters of the younger Pliny is here
fully developed, with a keener eye and an enlarged power of
expression. Pliny's description of the Clitumnus may be
interestingly compared with the passage of this poem in
which Ausonius recounts, with fine and observant touches,
the beauties of his northern river — the liquid lapse of
waters, the green wavering reflections, the belt of crisp
sand by the water's edge and the long weeds swajring with
the stream, the gleaming gravel-beds under the water with
their patches of moss and the quick fishes darting hither
and thither over them ; or the oftener-quoted and not less
beautiful lines where he breaks into rapture over the simset
colouring of stream and bank, and the glassy water where,
at evening, all the hills waver and the vine-tendril shakes
and the grape-bunches swell in the crystal mirror. In virtue
of this poem Ausonius ranks not merely as the last, or all
but the last, of Latin, but as the first of French poets. His
feeling for the country of his birth has all the romantic
patriotism which we are accustomed to associate with a
much earlier or a much later age. The language of Du
Bellay in the sixteenth century —

VII.] Ausonius, 267

Plus que le marbre dur me plats t Vardoise fine^
Plus mon Loire Gaulois que le Tybre Latin —

is anticipated here. The softer northern loveliness, la
douceur Angevine, appeals to Ausonius more than all the
traditional beauties of Arcadia or Sicily. It is with the
Gallic rivers that he compares his loved Moselle : Non tibi
se Liger anteferet^ non Axona praeceps , , . te sparsis incerta
Druentia ripis,

O lordly flow the Loire and Seine
And loud the dark Durance / —

we seem to hear the very words of the modem ballad : and
at the end of the poem his imagination returns, with the
fondness of a lover, to the green lakes and sounding streams
of Aquitaine, and the broad sea-like reaches of his native
Garonne.

In this poem, alike by the classic beauty of his language
and the modernism of his feeling, Ausonius marks one of
the great divisions in the history of poetry. He is the last
of the poets of the Empire which was still nominally co-
extensive with the world, which held in itself East and West,
the old and the new. The final division of the Roman
world, which took place in the year 395 between the two
sons of Theodosius, s)nichronises with a division as definite
and as final between classical and mediaeval poetry; and
in the last years of the fourth century the parting of the
two streams, the separation of the dying from the dawning
light, is placed in sharp relief by. the works of two con-
temporary poets, Claudian and Prudentius. The singular
and isolated figure of Claudian, the posthumous child of the
classical world, stands alongside of that of the first great
Christian poet like the figures which were fabled to stand,
regarding the rising and setting sun, by the Atlantic gates
where the Mediterranean opened into the unknown Western
seas.

Claudius Claudianus was of Asiatic origin, and lived at

268 Latin Literature. [m.

Alexandria antfl^ in the jear of the death of TheodosinSy he
passed into Italy and became the laureate of the cocut of
Milan. Till then he had, according to his own statement,
written in Greek, his life having been passed wholly in the
Greek-speaking provinces. But immediately on his arrival
at the seat of the Western or Latin Empire he showed him-
self a master of the language and forms of Latin poetry
such as had not been known since the end of the first
century. His poems, so far as they can be dated, belong
entirely to the next ten years. He is conjectured not to
have long survived the downfall of his patron Stilicho,
the great Vandal general who, as guardian of the young
Emperor Honorius, was practically ruler of the Western
Empire. He was the last eminent man of letters who was
a professed pagan.

The historical epics which Claudian produced in rapid
succession during the last five years of the fourth and the
first five of the fifth century are now little read, except
by historians who refer to them for details of the wars
or court intrigues of the period. A hundred )rears ago,
when Statius and Silius Italicus formed part of the regular
course of classical study, he naturally and properly stood
alongside of them. His Latin L as pure as that of the
best poets of the Silver Age ; in wealth of language and
in fertility of imagination he is excelled, if at all, by Statius
alone. Alone in his age he inherits the scholarly tradition
which still lingered among the libraries of Alexandria.
Nonnus, the last and not one of the least learned and
graceful of the later Greek epicists, who probably lived not
long after Claudian, was also of Eg)rptian birth and training,
and he and Claudian are really the last representatives of
that Alexandrian school which had from the first had so
large and deep an influence over the literature of Rome.
The immense range of time covered by Greek literature is
brought more vividly to our imagination when we consider
that this single Alexandrian school, which began late in

VII.] Claudian. 269

the history of Greek writing and came to an end centuries
before its extinction, thus completely overlaps at both ends
the whole life of the literature of Rome, reaching as it
does from before Ennius till after Claudian.

These historical epics of Claudian*s — On the Consulate of
Stilicho, On the Gildonic War, On the PoUentine War, On
the Third, Fourthy and Sixth Consulates of Honorius — are
accompanied by other pieces, written in the same stately
and harmonious hexameter, of a more personal interest:
invectives against Rufinus and Eutropius, the rivals of his
patron; a panegyric on Stilicho's wife, Serena, the niece
of Theodosius; a fine epithalamium on the marriage of
Honorius with Maria, the daughter of Stilicho and Serena ;
and also by a number of poems in elegiac metre, in which
he wrote with equal grace and skill, though not with so
singular a mastery. Among the shorter elegiac pieces,
which are collected under the title of Epigrams, one, a poem
on an old man of Verona who had never travelled beyond
his own little suburban property, is among the jewels of
Latin poetry. The lines in which he describes this quiet
garden life —

Frugibus altemis, non consule cotnputat annum ;

Auctumnum pomis, ver sibiflore notat;
Idem condit ager soles idemque reducit,

Metiturque suo rusticus orbe diem,
Ingentem meminit parvo qui germine quercum

Aequaevumque videt consenuisse nemus —

are in grace and feeling like the very finest work of
Tibullus ; and the concluding couplet —

Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Hiberos,
Plus habet hie vitae, plus habet ille viae —

though, in its dependence on a verbal point, it may not
satisfy the purest taste, is not without a dignity and pathos
that are worthy of the large manner of the classical period.

270 Latin Literature. [III.

Claudian used the heroic hexameter for m3rthological as
well as historical epics. Of his Gigantomachia we possess
only an inconsiderable fragment; but the three books of
the unfinished Rape of Proserpine are among the finest
examples of the purely literary epic. The description of
the flowery spring meadows where Proserpine and her
companions gather blossoms for garlands is a passage per-
petually quoted. It is interesting to note how the rising
tide of romanticism has here, as elsewhere, left Claudian
wholly untouched. The passage, though elaborately ornate,
is executed in the clear hard manner of the Alexandrian
school; it has not a trace of that sensitiveness to nature
which vibrates in the Pervigilium Veneris. We have gone
back for a moment to that poetical style which perpetually
reminds us of the sculptured friezes of Greek art, severe in
outline, immensely adroit and learned in execution, but
a little chilly and colourless except in the hands of its
greatest masters. After paying to the full the tribute of
admiration which is due to Claudian's refined and dignified
workmanship, we are still left with the feeling that this
kind of poetry was already obsolete. It is not only that,
as has been remarked with truth of his historical epics,
the elaboration of the treatment is disproportionate to the
importance or interest of the subject. Materiam superabat
opus might be said with equal truth of much of the work
of his predecessors. But a new spirit had by this time
penetrated literature, and any poetry wholly divorced from
it must be not only artificial — for that alone would prove
nothing against it — but unnatural. Claudian is a precursor
of the Renaissance in its narrower aspect ; the last of the
classics, he is at the same time the earliest, and one of
the most distinguished, of the classicists. It might seem
a mere chance whether his poetry belonged to the fourth
or to the sixteenth century.

In Claud ian*s distinguished contemporary, the Spanish
poet Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, Christian Latin poetry

VII .] Pmdentius. 271

reached complete maturity. His collected poems were
published at Rome in 404, the year celebrated by Claudian
as that of the sixth consulship of Honorius. Before Pru-
dentius, Christian poetry had been slight in amount and
rude or tentative in manner. We have already had occa-
sion to notice its earliest efforts in the rude verses of
Commodianus. The revival of letters in the fourth century,
so far as it went, affected Christian as well as secular
poetry. Under Constantine, a Spanish deacon, one Gains
Vettius Aquilinus Juvencus, put the Gospel narrative into
respectable hexameters, which are still extant. The poems
and hymns which have come down under the name of
Bishop Hilary of Poitiers are probably spurious, and a
similar doubt attache^ to those ascribed to the eminent
grammarian and rhetorician, Oaius Marius Victorinus, after
his conversion. Before Prudentius published his collection,
the hymns of St. Ambrose had been written, and were
in use among the Western Churches. But these, though
they formed the type foi^ all later hymn-writers, were few
in number. Out of the so-called Ambrosian hymns a
rigorous criticism only allows five or six as authentic.
These, however, include two world-famed pieces, still in
daily use by the Church, the Aeterne rerum Conditor and
the Deus Creator omnium^ and the equally famous Veni
Redemptor,

To the form thus established by St. Ambrose, Prudentius,
in his two books of lyrical poems, gave a larger volume
and a more sustained literary power. The Cathemerina,
a series of poems on the Christian life, and the Periste-
phanoHy a book of the praise of Christian martyrs — St.
Lawrence, St. Vincent, St. Agnes, among other less cele-
brated names — at once represent the most substantial
addition made to Latin lyrical poetry since Horace, and
the complete triumph of the new religion. They are not,
like the Ambrosian hymns, brief pieces meant for actual
singing in churches. Out of the twenty-six poems only

2/2 Latin Literature. [HI.

three are under one hundred lines in length, and that on
the martyrdom of St. Romanus of Antioch runs to no less
than eleven hundred and forty, almost the proportions of
a small epic. But in the brilliance and vigour of their
language, their picturesque style, and the new joy that,
in spite of their asceticism, bums throughout them, they
gave an impulse of immense force towardff the development
of Christian literature. In merely technical quality they
are superior to apy poetry of the time, Claudian alone
excepted ; in their fulness of life, in the exultant tone which
kindles and sustains them, they make Claudian grow pale
like a candle-flame at dawn.

With Prudentius, however, as with Claudian, we have
almost passed beyond the strict limit of a history of ancient
Latin literature : and any filler discussion, either of these
remarkable lyrical pieces, or of his more voluminous ex-
pository or controversial treatises in hexameter, properly
belongs to a history of the Christian Church. The two
most eminent and copious prose writers of the later fourth
century, Jerome and Augustine, occupy the same am-
biguous position. Apart from them, and from the less
celebrated Christian writers who were their predecessors or
contemporaries, the prose of the fourth century is both
small in amount and insignificant in quality. The revival
in verse composition which followed the settlement of the
Empire imder Constantine scarcely spread to the less
imitable art of prose. The school of eminent Roman
grammarians who flourished about the middle of the
century, and among whom Servius and Donatus are the
leading names, while they commented on ancient master-
pieces with inexhaustible industry, and often with really
sound judgment, wrote themselves in a base and formless
style. A few authors of technical manuals and epitomes
of history rise a little above the common level, or have
a casual importance from the contents of their works. The
treatises on husbandry by Palladius, and on the art of war

W'y.\i

VII.] Ammianus Marcellinus, 273

by Flavius Vegetius Renatus, became, to a certain degree,
standard works; the little handbooks of Roman history
written in the reigns of Constantius and Valens by Aurelius
Victor and Eutropius are simple and unpretentious, but
have little positive merit. The age produced but one
Latin historian, Ammianus Marcellinus. Like Claudian,
he was of Asiatic origin, and Greek-speaking by birth, but,
in the course of his service on the staff of the captain-
general of the imperial cavalry, had spent much of his life
in the Latin provinces of Gaul and Italy ; and his history
was written at Rome, where he lived after retiring from
active service. The task he set himself, a history of the
Empire, in continuation of that of Tacitus, from the acces-
sion of Nerva to the death of Valens, was one of great
scope and unusual complexity. He brought to it some
at least of the gifts of the historian : intelligence, honesty,
tolerance, a large amount of good sense. But his Latin,
which he never came to write with the ease of a native,
is difficult and confused ; and to this, probably, should be
ascribed the early disappearance of the greater part of his
history. The last eighteen books, containing the history
of only five and twenty years, have survived. The greater
part of the period which they cover is one of decay and
wretchedness; but the account they give of the reign of
Julian (whom Ammianus had himself accompanied in his
Persian campaign) is of great interest, and his portrait of
the feeble incapable rule of Julian's successors, distracted
between barbarian inroads and theological disputes, is
drawn with a firm and almost a masterly hand.

The Emperor Valens fell, together with nearly the whole
of a great Roman army, in the disastrous battle of Adria-
nople. A Visigothic horde, to the number of two hundred
thousand fighting men, had crossed the Danube ; and the
Huns and Alans, names even more terrible, joined the stan-
dards of Fritigern with a countless host of Mongolian cavalry.
The heart of the Empire lay helpless ; Constantinople itself

274 Latin Literature, [III.

was besieged by the conquerors. The elevation of Theo-
dosius to the purple bore back for a time the tide of
disaster; once more the civilised world staggered to its
feet, but with strength and courage fatally broken. At
this dramatic moment in the downfall of the Roman Empire
the last of the Latin historians closes his narrative.

mBESBSSm

vra.

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

In August 410, while the Emperor Honorius fed his
poultry among the impenetrable marshes of Ravenna, Rome
was sacked by a mixed army of Goths and Huns under
the command of Alaric. Eight hundred years had elapsed
since the imperial city had been in foreign possession ; and,
though it had ceased to be the actual seat of government,
the shock spread by its capture through the entire Roman
world was of unparalleled magnitude. Six years later,
a wealthy and distinguished resident, one Claudius Rutilius
Namatianus, was obliged to take a journey to look after the
condition of his estates in the south of France, which had
been devastated by a band of wandering Visigoths. A
large portion is extant of the poem in which he described
this journey, one of the most charming among poems of
travel, and one of the most interesting of the fragments
of early mediaeval literature. Nowhere else can we see
portrayed so strongly the fascination which Rome then still
possessed for the whole of Western Europe, and the
adoration with which she was still regarded as mother and
light of the world. The magical statue had been cast away,
with other heathen idols, from the imperial bedchamber;
but the Fortuna Urbis itself, the mystical divinity which
the statue represented, still exercised an overwhelming
influence over men's imagination. After all the praises
lavished on her for centuries by so many of her illustrious

275

276 Latin Literature. [IIL

children, it was left for this foreigner, in the age of her
decay, to pay her the most complete and most splendid
eulogy : —

Quod regnas minus est quam quod regnare mereris;

Excedis factis grandiafata tuis :
Nam solis radiis aequalia munera tendis^

Qua circumfusus fluctuat oceanus,
Fecisti patriam diversis gentidus unam :

Profuit invitis te dominante capi;
Dumque offers victis proprii consortia iuris,

Urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat

In this noble apostrophe Rutilius addressed the fading
mistress of the world as he passed lingeringly through the
Ostian gate. Far away in Northern Africa, the most
profound thinker and most brilliant writer of the age, as
deeply but very differently moved by the ancestral splen-
dours of the city and the tragedy of her fall, was then
composing, with all the resources of his vast learning and
consummate dialectical skill, the epitaph of the ancient
civilisation. It was the capture of Rome by Alaric which
induced St Augustine to undertake his work on the City
of God, " In this middle age," he says, — in hoc interim
seculo — the two cities with their two citizenships, the
earthly and the heavenly, are inextricably enwound and
intermingled with each other. Not until the Last Judg-
ment will they be wholly separated ; but the philosophy of
history is to trace the steps by which the one is slowly
replaced by, or transformed into, the other. The earthly
Empire, all the splendid achievement in thought and arts
and deeds of the Roman civilisation, already fades away
before that City of God on which his eyes are fixed —
gloriosissimam Civitatem Dei^ sive in hoc temporum cursu
cum inter impios peregrinatur ex fide vivens, sive in iUa
stabiliiate sedis aeternae, quam nunc exspectat per patientiam^
quoadusque iustitia convertatur in iudicium.

VIII.] The End of the Ancient World. 277

The evolution of this change was, even to the impassioned
faith of Augustine, slow, intermittent, and fluctuating : nor,
among many landmarks and turning-points, is it easy to fix
any single one as definitely concluding the life of the
ancient world, and marking the beginning of what St.
Augustine for the first time called by the name, which has
ever since adhered to it, of the Middle Age. The old
world slid into the new through insensible gradations. In
nearly all Latin literature after Virgil we may find traces
or premonitions of mediaevalism, and after mediaevalism
was established it long retained, if it ever wholly lost,
traces of the classical tradition. Thus, while the beginning
of Latin literature may be definitely placed in a particular
generation, and almost in a single year, there is no fixed
point at which it can be said that its history concludes.
Different periods have been assigned from different points
of view. In the year 476, Romulus Augustulus, the last of
the Western Emperors, handed over the name as well as
the substance of sole power to the Herulian chief Odoacer,
the first King of Italy ; and the Roman Senate, still in
theory the supreme governing body of the civilised world,
formally renounced its sovereignty, and declared its domin-
ions a diocese of the Byzantine Empire. This is the
date generally adopted by authors who deal with literature
as subordinate to political history. But the writer of the
standard English work on Latin grammar limits his field
to the period included between Plautus and Suetonius;
while another scholar, extending his scope three centuries
and a half further, has written a history of Latin literature
from Ennius to Boethius. Suetonius and Boethius probably
represent the extreme variation of limit which can be
reasonably adopted; but between them they leave room
for many points of pause. Up to the end of the fourth
century we have followed a stream of tendency, not, indeed,
continuous, but yet without any absolute rupture. Between
the writers of the fourth century and their few successors

2/8 Latin Literature, [III.

of the fifth there is no marked change in language or
manner. Sidonius Apollinaris continues more feebly the
style of poetry initiated a century before him by Ausonius.
Boethius wrote his fine treatise On the Consolation of
Philosophy half a century after the extinction of the Empire
of the West. By a strange freak of history, it was at the
Greek capital that Latin scholarship finally fiaded away.
Priscian and Tribonian wrote at Constantinople; and the
Western world received its most authoritative works on
Latin grammar and Roman law, not from the Latin Empire,
nor from one of the Latin-speaking kingdoms which rose
on its ruins, but from the half-oriental courts of Anastasius
and Justinian.

The two long lives of the great Latin fathers, Jerome and
Augustine, cover conjointly a space of just a century.
Jerome was bom probably a few months after the main
seat of empire was formally transferred to New Rome by
Constantine. Augustine, bom twenty-three years later,
died in his cathedral city of Hippo during its siege by
Genseric in the brief war which t rans formed Africa from a
Roman province to a Vandal kingdom. The City of God
had been completed four years previously. A quarter of
a century before the death of Augustine, Jerome issued,
from his monastery at Bethlehem, the Latin translation of
the Bible which, on its own merits, and still more if we
give weight to its overwhelming influence on later ages, is
the greatest literary masterpiece of the Lower Empire. Our
own Authorised Version has deeply affected all post-
Shakespearian English ; the Vulgate of Jerome, which was
from time to time revised in detail, but still remains sub-
stantially as it issued from his haiidlSir had an equally
profound influence over a vastly greater space and time.
It was for Europe of the Middle Ages more than Homer
was to Greece. The year 405, which witnessed its publica-
tion and that of the last of the poems of Claudian to
which we can assign a certain date, may claim to be held,

VIILJ First Period, 279

if any definite point is to be fixed, as marking the end of
ancient and the complete establishment of mediaeval
Latin.

In the six and a half centuries which had passed since
the Greek prisoner of war from Tarentum produced the
first Latin play in the theatre of the mid-Italian Republic
which was celebrating her victories over the formidable
sea-power of Carthage, Latin literature had shared the
vicissitudes of the Roman State ; and the successive stages
of its development and decay are intimately connected with
the political and social changes which are the matter of
Roman history. A century passed between the conclusion
of the first Punic war and the tribunate of Tiberius
Gracchus. It was a period for the Republic of internal
tranquillity and successful foreign war. At its conclusion,
Italy was organised under Roman control. Greece,
Macedonia, Spain, and Africa had become subject prov-
inces; a Roman protectorate was established in Egypt,
and the Asiatic provinces of the Macedonian Empire only
preserved a precarious and partial independence. During
this century, Latin literature had firmly established itself in
a broad and vigorous growth. Dramatic and epic poetry,
based on diligent study of the best Greek models, formed
a substantial body of actual achievement, and under Greek
impulse the Latin language was being wrought into a medium
of expression at once dignified and copious, a substance
capable of indefinite expansion and use in the hands of
trained artists. Prose was rapidly overtaking verse. The
schools of law, and the oratory of the senate-house and the
forum, were developing national forms of literature on
distinctively Roman lines : a beginning had been made in
the more difficult field of history; and the invention and
popularisation of the satire, or mixed form of familiar prose
and verse, began to enlarge the scope of literature over a
broader field of life and thought, while immensely adding
to the flexibility and range of the written language.

28o Latin Literature. [III.

A centmy followed during which Roman nde was
extended and consolidated over the whole area of the
countries fringing the Mediterranean, while concnrrently
a long series of revolutions and coonter-revolutioiis ended
in the overthrow of the republican oligarchy, and the
establishment of the imperial govemmenL Begiiming with
the democratic movement of the Gracchi, this century
includes the civil wars of Marius and Sulla, the temporary
reconstitution of the oligarchy, the renewed outbreak of war
between Julius Caesar and the senate, and the confused
period of administrative anarchy which was terminated by
the rise of Augustus to a practical dictatorship, and the
arrangement by him of a working compromise between the
two great opposing forces. During this century of revolu-
tion the whole attitude of Rome towards the problems
both of internal and of foreign politics was forced through
a series of important changes. The revolt of Italy, which,
after bringing Rome to the verge of destruction, was finally
crushed by the Asiatic legions of Sulla^ was almost im-
mediately followed by the unification of Italy, and her
practical absorption into the Roman citizenship. With
renewed and enlarged life, Rome then entered on a second
extension of her dominions. The annexation of Syria and
the conquest of Gaul completed the circle of her empire ;
the subjugation of Spain was completed, and the Eastern
frontier pushed towards Armenia and the Euphrates;
finally Egypt, the last survivor of the kingdoms foimded by
Alexander's generals, passed wholly into Roman hands
with the extinction of its own royal house.

During this period of perpetual excitement and high
political tension, literature, in the forms both of prose and
verse, rapidly grew towards maturity, and, in the former
field at least, reached its perfection. Oratory, the great
weapon of politicians under the unique Republican con-
stitution, was in its golden age. Greek culture had per-
meated the governing class. History began to be written

VIII.] Second and Third Periods. 281

by trained statesmen, whose education for the command
of armies and the rule of provinces had been based on
elaborate linguistic and rhetorical study. Alongside of
grammar and rhetoric, poetry and philosophy took a place
as part of the higher education of the citizen. The habit
and capacity of abstract thought reached Rome from the
schools of Athens ; with the growing power of expression
and the increased tension of actual life, the science of
politics and the philosophy of life and conduct became the
material of a new and splendid literature. Along with the
world of ideas diffused by Athens there arrived the immense
learning and high technical skill of the Alexandrian scholars
and poets. Roman poetry set itself anew to learn the
Greek lesson of exquisite form and perfect finish. In the
hands of two poets of the first order, and of a crowd of
lesser students, the conquest of poetical form passed its
crucial point, and the way was prepared for the consumma-
tion of Latin poetry in the next age.

Another century carries us from the establishment of the
Empire by Augustus to the extinction of his family at the
death of Nero. At the opening of this period the Empire
was exhausted by civil war, and welcomed any form of
settled rule. The settlement of the constitution, based as
it was on a number of elaborate legal fictions meant to
combine republican forms with the reality of a strong
monarchical government, left the political situation in a
state of very unstable equilibrium ; all through the century
the government was in an uncertain or even a false
position, and, when Nero*s misrule had made it intolerable,
it collapsed with a crash which almost shivered the Empire
into fragments. But it had lasted long enough to lay the
foundations of the new and larger Rome broadly and
securely. The provinces, while still in a sense subordinate
to Italy, had already become organic parts of the Empire,
instead of subject countries. The haughty and obstinate
Roman oligarchy was tamed by long years of proscription.

282 Latin Literature, [III.

confiscation^ perpetual surveillance, careful exclusion from
great political power. The municipal institutions and civic
energy of Rome were multiplied in a thousand centres of
local life. Internal peace allowed commerce and civilisa-
tion to spread ; in spite of the immense drain caused by
the extravagance of the capital and the expense of the
great frontier armies, the provinces generally rose to a
higher state of material welfare than they had enjoyed
since their annexation.

The earlier years of this century are the most brilliant in
the history of Latin literature. During the last fifty years
of the Republic a series of Roman authors of remarkable
genius had gradually met and mastered the technical
problems of both prose and verse. The new generation
entered into their labours. In prose there was little, if
any, advance remaining to be made. In the fields of
oratory and philosophy it had already reached its perfec-
tion ; in that of history it acquired further amplitude and
colour. But the achievement of the new age was mainly
in verse. Profound study of the older poetry, and the labori-
ous training learned from the schools of Alexandria, now
bore fruit in a body of poetry which, in every field except
that of the drama, excelled what had hitherto been known,
and was at once the model and the limit for succeeding
generations. Latin poetry, like the Empire itself, took a
broader basis ; the Augustan poets are still Romans, but
this is because Rome had extended itself over Italy.

The copious and splendid production of the earlier years
of the principate of Augustus was followed by an almost
inevitable reaction. The energy of the Latin speech had
for the time exhausted itself; and the political necessities
of the uneasy reigns which followed set further barriers in
the way of a weakening literary impulse. Then begins the
movement of the Latin-speaking provinces. Rome had
absorbed Italy ; Italy in turn begins to absorb and coalesce
with Gaul, Spain, and Africa. The first of the provinces

VIII.] Fourth Period, 283

in the field was Spain, which had become Latinised earlier
than either of the others. At the court of Nero a single
brilliant Spanish family founded a new and striking style,
which for the moment eclipsed that formed by a purer taste
amid a graver and a more exclusive public.

A hundred years from the downfall of Nero carry us
down to the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The Empire, when
it recovered from the collapse of the year 69, assumed a
settled and stable organisation. Traditions of the old
jealousies and discontents lingered during the reigns of
the three Flavian Emperors ; but the imperial system had
now got into permanent working order. The cataclysm
which followed the deposition of Nero is in the strongest
contrast to the ease and smoothness, only broken by a
trifling mutiny of the praetorian guards, with which the
principate passed into the hands of Nerva after the murder
of Domitian.

This century is what is properly known as the Silver
Age. A school of eminent writcrc, in whom the provincial
and the Italian quality are now hardly to be distinguished,
produced during its earlier years a large body of admirable
prose and not undistinguished verse. But before the
century was half over, the signs of decay began to appear.
A mysterious languor overcame thought and art, as it did
the whole organism of the Empire. The conquests of
Trajan, the peace and material splendour of the reign of
Hadrian, were followed by a series of years almost without
events, suddenly broken by the appalling pestilence of the
year 166, and the outbreak, at the same time, of a long and
desperate war on the northern frontiers. During these
eventless years Latin literature seemed to die away. The
classical impulse was exhausted; the attempts made to-
wards founding a new Latin bore, for the time, little fruit.
Before this period of exhaustion and reaction could come
to a natural end, two changes of momentous importance
had overtaken the world. The imperial system broke down

284 Latin Literature. pll.

under Commodus. All through the third century the civil
organisation of the Empire jvas at the mercy of military
adventurers. Twenty-five recognised emperors, besides a
swarm of pretenders, most of them raised to the purple
by mutinous armies, succeeded one another in the hundred
years between Commodus and Diocletian. At the same
time the Christian religion, already recognised under the
Antonines as a grave menace to the very existence of the
Empire, was extending itself year by year, rising more
elastic than ever from each fresh persecution, and attract-
ing towards itself all the vital forces which go to make
literature.

The coalition between the Empire and the Church, which,
after various tentative preliminaries, was finally effected by
Constantine, launched the world upon new paths : and his
transference of the main seat of empire to the shores of the
Bosporus left Western Europe to pursue fragmentary and
independent courses. The Latin-speaking provinces were
falling away in great lumps. An independent empire of
Britain had already existed for six or seven years under the
usurper Carausius. After the middle of the fourth century
Gaul was practically in possession of the Visigoths and the
Salian Franks. During the reign of Honorius mixed hordes
of Vandals, Suabians, and Alans poured through Gaul
across the Pyrenees, and divided Spain into barbarian
monarchies. A few years later the Vandals, called across
the straits of Gibraltar by the treachery of Count Boniface,
overran the province of Africa, and established a powerful
kingdom, whose fleets, issuing from the port of Carthage,
swept the Mediterranean and sacked Rome itself. Rome
had, by the famous edict of Antoninus Caracalla, given
the world a single citizenship ; to give organic life to that
citizenship, and turn her citizens into a single nation, was
a task beyond her power. So long as the Latin-speaking
world remained nominally subject to a single rule, exercised
in the name of the Senate and People of Rome, Latin

VIII.] The World after Rome. 285

literature had some slight external bond of unity ; after the
Western Empire was shattered into a dozen independent
kingdoms, the phrase almost ceases to have any real
meaning. I>atin, in one form or another, remained an
almost universal language; but we must speak henceforth
of the literatures of France or Spain or Britain, whether the
work produced be written in a provincial dialect or in the
international language handed down from the Empire and
preserved by the Church.

For the Catholic Church now became the centre of
European cohesion, and gave continuity and common life
to the scattered remains of the ancient civilisation. Already,
in the fifth century. Pope Leo the Great is a more important
figure than his contemporary, Valentinian the Second, for
thirty years the shadowy and impotent Emperor of the
West. Christian literature had taken firm root while the
classical tradition was still strong ; in the hands of men like
Jerome and Augustine that tradition was caught up from
the wreck of the Empire and handed down, not unimpaired,
yet still in prodigious force and vitality, to the modem world.

Latin is now no longer a universal language; and the
direct influence of ancient Rome, which once seemed like
an immortal energy, is at last, like all energies, becoming
slowly absorbed in its own results. Yet the Latin language
is still the necessary foundation of one half of human
knowledge, and the forms created by Roman genius underlie
the whole of our civilisation. So long as mankind look
before and after, the name of Rome will be the greatest of
those upon which their backward gaze can be turned. In
Greece men first learned to be human : under Rome man-
kind first learned to be civilised. Law, government, citizen-
ship, are all the creations of the Latin race. At a thousand
points we still draw directly from the Roman sources.
The codes of Latin jurists are the direct source of all
systems of modem law. The civic organisation which it
was the great work of the earlier Roman Empire to spread

286 Latin Literature, fill.

throughout the provinces is the basis of our municipal
institutions and our corporate social life. The names of
our months are those of the Latin year, and the modem
calendar is, with one slight alteration, that established by
Julius Caesar. The head of the CathoHc Church is still
called by the name of the president of a Republican college
which goes back beyond the beginnings of ascertained
Roman history. The architecture which we inherit from
the Middle Ages, associated by an accident of history with
the name of the Goths, had its origin under the Empire,
and may be traced down to modem times, step by step,
from the basiUca of Trajan and the palace of Diocletian.
These are but a few instances of the inheritance we have
received from Rome. But behind the ordered structure of
her law and government, and the majestic fabric of her
civilisation, lay a vital force of even deeper import; the
strong grave Roman character, which has permanently
heightened the ideal of human life. It is in their literature
that the inner spirit of the Latin race found its most
complete expression. In the stately structure of that
imperial language they embodied those qualities which
make the Roman name most abidingly great — honour,
temperate wisdom, humanity, courtesy, magnanimity; and
the civilised world still returns to that fountain-head, and
finds a second mother-tongue in the speech of Cicero and
VirgiL

INDEX OF AUTHORS

PAGB
12
29
29

ACClUSy !-«• • • • • • •

Aelius, P

Aelius, Sex.

Aemilianus, Palladius Ru-

tilius Taurus

Afranius, L

Africanus, P. Cornelius

Scipio Aemilianus
Agrippa, M.
Albinus, Qodius . . .
Alimentus, L. Cincius

Ambrosius

Andronicus, L. Livius
Antias, Valerius
Antipater, L. Caelius
Antonius, M.
ApoUinari^, see Sidonius.

Apuleius, L.

Arbiter, Petronius . . .

Arnobius

Asconius, see Pedianus.
Asper, Aemilius
Atta, Quinctius
Atticus, T. Pomponius
Augustus, G. Julius Caesar

Octavianus 121, 162

Ausonius, Dec. Magnus . . . 265

PAGB

272
IS

33
162

262

265, 271

4
37
33
36

238
183
255

204

15
74,86

Bassus, Caesius ... .

Bassus, Saleius

Boethius, Anicius Manlius

Torquatus Severinus .

Brutus, M. Junius ... .

Caecilius, Statins ... .
Caecus, Ap. Claudius

178
192

278
30

16
30

Caelius, see Antipater.
Caelius, see Rufus.

Caesar, G. Julius

Caesar, Tib. Claudius Dm-

sus Nero

Calpurnius, see Siculus.

Calvus, G. Licinius Macer

Capitolinus, Julius . . .

Cams, T. Lucretius

Cassius, see Hemina.

Cato, M. Porcius . . .

Catullus, G. Valerius

Celsus, A. Cornelius

Cicero, M. TuUius . . .

Cicero, Q. Tullius . . .

Cincius, see Alimentus.

Cinna, G. Helvius . . .

Qaudianus, Qaudius

Claudius, see Caecus.

Clemens, Aurelius Prudentius 270

Columella, L. Junius Mod-

eratus 181

Commodianus 257

Corbulo, Domitius i&>

Cornificius 36

Crassus, L. Licinius ... 36
Crispus, G. Sallustius ... 82
Curtius, see Rufus.
Cyprianus, Thascius Caecilius 254

157

53
263

39
30

62
86

267

Donatus, Aelius

Ennius, Q. ...

Eumenius

Eutropius

272

265

273

287

288

Index of Authors.

PAGE

Fabius, see Pictor.

Fannios, G 33

Felix, Minucius 249

Festus, Sex. Pompeios ... 165

Flaccus, Q. Horatius . . . 106

Flaccus, A^ Persius ... 178

Flaccus, G. Valerias ... 190

Flaccus, M. Verrius . . . 165
Florus, Julius {or Lucius)

Annaeus 229

Frontinus, Sex. Julius ... 197

Fronto, M. Cornelius . . . 234

Frugi, L. Calpurnius Piso 28

Gaius 229

Gallicanus, Vulcacius . . . 263

Gallus, G. Cornelius ... 122

Gellius, A. 231

Germanicus 157

Gordianus, M. Antonius . . . 262

Gracchus, G. Sempronius 36

Gradus {or Grattius) ... 122

Hemina, L. Cassius ... 28

Hilarius 265, 271

Hirdus, A 81

Honoratus, Marius {or

Maurus) Servius . . • 272
Horace, see Flaccus.
Hortalus, Q. Hortensius 65, 86
Hortensius, see Hortalus.

Hyginus, G. Julius 164

Italicus, Tib. Catius Silius 191

Javolenus, see Priscus.

JulianuSy Salvius 229

Junior, Lucilius 182

Justinus, M. Junianus 163, 229

Juvenalis, D. Junius ... 221
Juvencus, G. Vettius Aquilinus 271

Laberius, Dec 87

Lactandus, L. Caecilius

Firmianus 255, 258

Laelius, G 33

Lampridius, Aelius . . . 263

Livius, see Andronicus.

livius, T. ... 145

Locanus, M. Annaeiis

Lucilius, G

Lucilius, see Junior.
Lucredns, see Cams.
Lygdamus

Macer, Aemilius . . •
Macer, G. Licinius
Macer, see Calvus.
Maecenas, G. Cilnius
Manilius, G. {or M.)
Manilius, M- '. ...
Marcellinus, Ammianus
Marius, see Maximus.
Marius, see Victorinus.
Maro, P. Vergilius . . .
Mardalis, M. Valerius
Matemus, Curiadus

Madus, Gn

Maurus, Terendanus
Maximus, Marius . . .
Maximus, Valerius . . .
Mela, Pomponius . . .
Melissus, Laevius . . .
Minucius, see Felix.

• • •

175

130

122

162
158

30
273

91
192

192

38
261

261

164

180

Naevius, Gn. 5

Namatianus, Claudius*Ratilius 275

Naso, P. Ovidius 135

Nemesianus, M. Aurelius

Olympius 262

Nepos, Cornelius 84

Oppius, G 81

Ovid, see Naso.

Pacuvius, M. 11

Palaemon, Q. Remmius . . . 165
Palladius, see Aemilianus.

Papinianus, Aemilius . . . 260

Paterculus, G. Velleius ... 163

Paulinus, G. Suetonius ... 180
Paulinus, Meropius Pondus

Anicius 257

Paulus (Diaconus) 165

Paulus, Julius 261

Pedianus, Q. Asconius . . . 204

Pedo, Albinovanus i^y

Persius, see Flaccus.

Index of Authors,

289

PAGB

Fetronius, see Arbiter.

Phaedrus 160

Philus, L. Furius 33

Pictor, Q. Fabius ... ... 28

Piso, see Frugi.

Plautus, T. Maccius ... 17

Pliny, see Secundus.

PoUio, G. Asinius ... 121, 162

PoUio, Trebellius 263

Pollio, Vitruvius 166

Priscianus 278

Priscus, Javolenus ... ... 229

Probus, M. Valerius . . . 204

Propertius, Sex 123

Prudentius, see Clemens.
Publilins, see Syrus.

Quadrigarius, Q. Gaudius 36

Quintilianus, M. Fabius ... 197

Rabirius 157

Renatus, Flavius Vegetius 273

Rufus, M. Caelius 75

Rufus, Q. Curtius 180

Rufus, Ser. Sulpicius ... 75

Rufus, L. Varius . . . 121, 122
Rutilius, see Namatianus.

Sabinus 157

Sallust, see Crispus.
Sammonicus, see Serenus.
Scaevola, Q. Mucins
Scipio, see Africanus.
Secundus, G. Plinius (major) 195

" " (minor) 225

Seneca, L. Annaeus (major)

" " (minor)

Serenus, Q. Sammonicus
Servius, see Honoratus.

Severus, Cornelius

Siculus, T. Calpurnius
Sidonius, G. Sollius Apolli-
nans ... ... ...

167
171
261

181

278

PAGB

Silius, see Italicus.

Sisenna, L. Cornelius ... .37

Spartianus, Aelius 263

Statins, P. Papinius ... 187'

Stella, L. Arruntius . . . 192
Suetonius, see Tranquillus.

Sulla, L. Cornelius ... 36
Sulpicia (major) ... 130, 134

Sulpicia (minor) 192

Sulpicius, see Rufus.

Syrus, Publilius 87

Tacitus, Cornelius 205

Terentianus, see Maurus.

Terentius, P. 22

Tertullianus, Q. Septimius

Florens 251

Tiberianus 263

Tiberius, see Caesar.

Tibullus, Albius 130

Tiro, M. Tullius 87

Titinius 15

Tranquillus, G. Suetonius 229

Tribonianus 278

Trogus, Gn. Pompeius . . . 163

Turpilius 16

Ulpianus, Domitius . . . 260

Valerius, see Antias.
Valerius, see Flaccus.
Valerius, see Maximus.
Varius, see Rufus.
Varro, M. Terentius ... 85
Varro, P. Terentius (Atacinus) 87
Vegetius, see Renatus.
Verrius, see Flaccus.

Victor, Aurelius 273

Victor (Pope) 248

Victorinus, G. Marius ... 271
Virgil, see Maro.
Vitruvius, see Pollio.
Vopiscus, Flavius 263

3 "!

1"J|

1 "^

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:■ i

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■I

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